


Leaving

by Winterstar



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Not really a death fic, Special guest stars from other TV shows and movies!, maybe bordering on crack or really is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter received a package and his whole world turns upside down when a little man with thick glasses walks into his office. Suddenly he is caught in a web he never dreamed possible. See notes for character death information (if you want to be spoiled)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Package

**Author's Note:**

> Throughout this story there will be several guest appearances from other shows and/or movies. You do not have to know any of them. These will just be squee moments for readers who know who they are. Just enjoy! Have fun with the ride!

The winter day greys out the lights of the city and, as Peter sits in his office, he doesn’t notice the delivery man until he’s perched near the entrance. He knows the guy; he’s been working in the mailroom for over two years. Waving him in, Peter signs for the package and looks at the rectangular box, the size of a shoe box. The return address tells him everything he needs to know, what it is. He cringes.

_Who it is._

He looks to the side and closes his eyes. He shouldn’t feel this way; after all he’d chase the guy all over the world and back again. He was just a criminal. Nothing more. 

Nothing less.

He recalls the phone call, the packages of gourmet cookies sent to taunt and to snicker. He remembers the day the phone call came and the whispered words.

“Are you all right, Agent Burke.”

“How did you know?” Peter thought he was out of the country when it happened.

“I know these things. Does Elizabeth need anything?”

“Nothing from you,” he’d said from his hospital bed.

“That hurts, Agent Burke, it does.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

The phone had gone dead. Peter wouldn’t hear from him again until just before it all went down. When Neal Caffrey escaped from prison with three months left on a four year sentence, Peter trailed after him for a year. It took every grain of his energy; he’d lost the Dutchman case in the process. He spiraled within the vortex of James Bonds again, only it wasn’t bonds. He couldn’t figure out what they were even after Kate and Neal hit the Italian Consulate. The Italians had stayed mum on what had been taken, and legally he had no way to get in there and check it out. 

The phone call came only two weeks ago and Neal’s voice sounded wrecked. “Go after Vincent Adler and you’ll find them.”

“Find who?”

“Adler and Kate.”

“I don’t understand, Neal, what is this about?”

A hoarse rasp answered him. “A God damned music box, Agent Burke, that’s what I’m worth. A God damned music box.”

He shifted gears and went full steam toward finding the notorious Adler and his new (possibly always) girlfriend, Kate Moreau. He’d been too late. 

Instead he found Neal Caffrey dead in the gutter with the remains of the amber music box scattered around his broken body. It looked like he’d been thrown from the overpass. There was a simple message in his pocket. An address for a warehouse.

Peter found a treasure there. He still doesn’t understand how the music box links to the treasure. He doesn’t understand how Neal Caffrey ended up with zipties binding his wrists and tossed over the pass into a ditch by the side of a road, the side of his skull smashed in. He still has the file open on his desk, a dead body, a runaway girlfriend, Vincent Adler, a music box, and a treasure. None of it makes any sense.

The only thing he knows is Neal didn’t deserve to die like that. He remembers seeing him once, early on during their second chase. He’d been standing looking out a window in a high rise apartment complex outside of DC. As Peter rushed in the room, Neal peered over his shoulder and winked at him, then sailed off the balcony, leaving Peter behind to watch him catapult to safety. He only murmured a wow as he watched. He respected Neal in some ways because he’d always performed crimes like it was art. He was a gentleman’s criminal. Not a criminal who ended up dead in a ditch.

He chokes back the bile in his throat and studies the box. He has no idea why he asked for it, or who granted him the rights to it. He just did. He reaches out and touches the box.

_Neal_

Gone, dead, ash. 

A tapping on his door brings him from his reverie. A small bald man with horn-rimmed glasses stands there. His eyes are swollen and red. He looks like he hasn’t slept in over a week.

“Can I help you?” he asks at the same time thinking how the hell did he get in here?

The man nods at the box and says, “I want you to get the bastards who did that to him.”

Peter points to the chair across from his desk. The strange little man sits on the edge and adjusts his glasses. 

“What do you know?”

“Suit, let me tell you a little story.”


	2. Chapter 2

Standing, staring out the window of his office, Peter tries to piece together what his visitor just told him, just asked of him. He’s not certain he’s actually awake, but then he looks at the box which contains the remains of Neal and swallows down the bile of the past. He squeezes the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. How could any of it be true? What would it harm if he just followed the little hermit about for a day or so? He might even get a lead on Adler and Kate, he might find the bastards who killed Neal for a music box linked to Nazi treasure and the space-time continuum.

He’s not even sure he just thought that correctly. He needs to get out, he needs to think things through, but he can’t. His mind is a muddled mess of words and events and doubts. How can he be sure of any reality now? What is reality and why is reality? 

“Damn it, Neal,” he says and the words echo, like he should have been saying them all along, like they should have been a familiar turn of phrase instead of something foreign on his tongue. The little man, he called himself Dante Haversham, told him that Peter caught Neal after that attempt to break out of prison, that Neal had worked for Peter as a CI for years. It made no sense at all. He’d nearly sent Dante or whatever the hell his name was packing, but then the little imp gave Peter a small smile and said, please. It hurt like hell to see someone so broken, so lost in his sorrow to beg like that for someone to believe him.

So Peter sat and listened and Dante wove a tale. It involved a long lost music box with a fractal which led to a missing Nazi u-boat. None of it hinged in reality, but Peter listened and nodded in all the right places. Adler looked for the u-boat but not for the treasure for a specific artifact called the Pink Scarab. As Dante described it, it was a crystal scarab once owed by the Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt. The Kings of Old used it to demonstrate their power. They could manipulate time and space and crops and war and all kinds of nonsense. 

Peter asked, “Did they find it?”

“After Kate forced Neal to break out of prison, kind of.”

“Kate forced Neal?” Peter had drummed his fingers on the desk.

“She threatened someone that Neal considers family,” Dante said and sniffled. His eyes were still red and every time he said Neal’s name his breath hitched. “So he broke out so that he could help find the scarab.”

“And they traced it to the music box?”

“Not really, Adler traced it to something the Nazis looted during the war, of course. He finally realized it was probably in one of the many hidden treasure troves of the Nazis hidden all over the world.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Hidden all over the world, you don’t say.”

“Are you going to listen to the story, Suit, or just be rude?” Dante shifted his glasses up his nose.

Peter opened his hands in what he hoped was a reconciliatory motion. While he really didn’t want to hear more, he couldn’t deal with thinking of his case load, or Neal dead in a box on his desk. 

“Okay, then. Anyway, after a little detective work and a lot of help from someone named Matthew Keller,” Dante said and waved his hand as if to disregard that one. “Adler found out that Neal had traced the scarab once to the music box.” 

“And why was Neal interested in the scarab?”

“Pink diamond scarab the only one ever described? Very rare-.”

“Very valuable.”

“You got it in one. You’re not so dull, Suit.”

“Why thank you, can we continue on this little trip to the land of legend now, please?” Peter had said and leaned back in his chair as he listened.

Dante smirked a bit but said, “The music box was legend itself, Suit. Supposedly Catherine the Great had it in her room of amber. It was lost some time ago, but then turned up with links to the Nazis. Eventually it went missing again after the war.” 

“With some link to the Italian consulate?”

Dante quirked an eyebrow up at him. “You are smarter than I thought. Yes, Neal had an idea from an old flame that the Italians had the box. So Kate and Neal were able to secure it.”

“Steal it.”

“Allegedly.”

“Why does that sound so familiar?” Peter shook his head.

“Because it is. Anyway, they ended up with box and it had a code in it which led to the u-boat treasure.”

“You do realize how ludicrous this all sounds?” Peter said. “A u-boat treasure that just happens to have sunk off the coast of New York, a fractal, and a music box that just also happens to be in New York in the Italian consulate?”

“Hey, you can’t write this stuff and have anyone believe it,” Dante said with a shrug.

“So they found the u-boat with the treasure and were able to get the scarab.”

“Not exactly,” Dante said.

“Neal conned them.” Peter rolled his eyes, and wondered why that felt extremely familiar and somehow very comfortable. 

“Yes, kind of. Let’s just say that before Adler was able to go through the entire treasure to look for the scarab, well, he lost the treasure and his warehouse blew up because of a gas leak.” Dante used air quotes on that one. “Then he went after Neal.”

“And killed him.”

“Yes.” Dante bowed his head and murmured, “I thought it was our final score. I had no idea it would get Neal killed.” 

“But Neal knew they weren’t working with him,” Peter said in a hushed tone.

“Yeah, he got pretty messed up when he realized Kate wanted nothing to do with him and had been bonking Adler’s brains out all the time she’d been with Neal,” Dante said. “Neal wanted to get back at Adler for stealing Kate, but I never thought he’d actually stolen Kate. I think Kate was with him all along. But with Neal you can’t, couldn’t tell him anything about Kate. He loved her heart and soul.”

Something harsh and cold twisted in Peter’s gut but he ignored it and told Haversham to continue. 

“So did they get what they wanted?”

Dante dug in his pocket then and placed the pink scarab on Peter’s desk. “No.”

“Neal died for this little beetle?” Peter picked up the sculpture. It was exquisite in detail and glimmered even in the dim light of the gray day. 

Dante folded his hands and clasped them between his knees. “Yeah, yeah and I want to make it right.”

“Murder investigation isn’t my thing. I could send you over to-.”

“No, you don’t get it, Suit.” Dante stood up and took the palm sized beetle from his hand. “I want to make things right, I want to change how things happened.”

“Change how things happened?” Peter put his hands on his hips and pressed his lips together in both disgust and sadness for the little fellow. “You can’t do that.”

“Yes, I can,” Dante said. “With this I can, and I want to know, Suit, are you willing to go do this with me? I need help on this; I need someone with a gun.”

“I’m not a hired gun, I’m the FBI.” He pointed to the little beetle and added, “And personally that is not a Delorean or a flux capacitor from what I see.”

“Oh, so witty,” Dante said. “I’ll prove it, but you have to be in first.”

So, Peter stands staring out at the winter landscape of the city below as the cloak of darkness and hibernation comes over the lights and the life. Haversham is waiting for his answer, waiting for him to tell him whether he’s in or out of his delusion.

His gaze falls on the box with Neal’s ashes in it. He knows the man was meant for so much more, not a broken skull and a death in the gutter. Not that. He remembers the leaps Neal did, the acrobatics of his crime spree. 

He decides to take the leap and follow Neal. “Okay, but first, you have to tell me your real name.”

“How about my first name?”

“Deal.”

“Mozzie, good to meet you, Suit.”

TBC


	3. The Archeologist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter meets one of Mozzie's long time experts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special guest stars for this chapter! See if you can spot them!

The bar is seedy, even for his tastes. When Peter enters the place, the shock between daylight and darkness takes more than a few minutes to adjust. Upon arrival, he notices an atmosphere quite different than any other bar in the city. He looks around at the few booths (only five) and the scattered tables (only four) in the tiny cave of a room. The ceiling is pitched low and echoes the idea of a cave. The walls only have peeling posters from fifty or so years ago on them and there’s a distinct smell of beer, urine, and musk in the air. He gags a little and his eyes water. For a second he thinks he should just turn around, go back. He feels like he’s in The Wizard of Oz and he’s the Cowardly Lion reading all the signs stating to go back, leave, get the hell out of Dodge. Except that, Peter’s fairly certain they didn’t say get out of Dodge, nor did they curse at all. 

He pauses, but decides to move forward when he hears Elizabeth’s voice in his head urging him to do this thing. He’d told her about it, of course he had. Having a little elf man enter his office with a fantastical story about a magic beetle, a treasure, and a dead man was just too much to keep secret. So, he discussed it with her. What made him think twice about it, what made him pause, was that she never smirked or laughed at all.

She only sat there, nodding, asking questions, and fingering his palm in her small, delicate way. When he was finished with his story, she smiled and said that she thought he should do it. She thought he should follow this little imp along the primrose path or the yellow brick road or somewhere sinister. When he asked her why, she looked around the house, their empty house, her eyes a little mournful. They’d just lost their dog – he’d been hit by a car. 

“Call it woman’s intuition. Call it what you like, but this isn’t the right way. This isn’t the life we’re supposed to live.” Peter only tilted his head at her and stayed silent. He didn’t know what to take of that comment. He kissed her then, long and hard and slow. It felt right and good and he realized how she knew things he could not possibly imagine.

He listened to her, though, and followed the trail back to the imp and his designated meeting place. He scans the dimly light room. The bartender is an older man with a goatee and every kind of cliché in the book. He’s wrinkled and tired and there’s too much light lost in his eyes to be really alive anymore. The thought of him causes Peter to swallow down his fear and look away. He remembers he has a gun tucked under his arm and that he’s an agent of the federal government. He’s safe and can protect himself.

Before he finds who he is looking for, Mozzie appears out of thin air by his side and nearly toppled Peter over in a faint. Safe indeed, he thinks. 

“Finally, I didn’t think you were going to show.”

Peter frowns. “You’re lucky, my wife convinced me.”

“I like her already, but then again I already did.”

Peter furrows his brow and tries not to think of how the man speaks in circles sometimes. It gets really aggravating. 

“This way,” Mozzie says and waves him over to the farthest booth. It isn’t the best booth as far as protection and get away is concerned, but at least he’ll have full view of the room as long as he gets the seat on the left. Of course, Mozzie pushes him into the bench on the right. His day is all kinds of wonderful.

There’s a man already in the booth, across from him in the coveted seat. He has a rugged look about him like he’s seen a lot of the world and too much action. He’s seen death, Peter can tell that because of the way he doesn’t make eye contact right away, he bows his head. It is as if he’s trying to keep himself from connecting with other people. When he does raise his head, Peter is astounded by his blue eyes and frankly wonderful smile. It is open and inviting and Peter can tell instantly that he uses the smile to put people at ease, to try and get people to listen to him, welcome him. 

Peter raises an eyebrow and thinks he might be a con-man, maybe one of Neal’s associates.

He offers a hand and says, “Peter Burke.”

“Daniel,” the man says. “Daniel Jackson.”

“This is Doctor Daniel Jackson,” Mozzie says with an emphasis on the Doctor. “He has a multiple doctorates.”

Peter considers if Mozzie is saying that just to impress him, intimidate him, or put some more weight to the crap he’s been spouting at Peter. He thinks it might be all three. 

“Nice to meet you. How do you know Mozzie?”

Mozzie fumes a little bit when Peter asks this question, but that’s good. Gotta keep the criminal elements on their toes.

“Martin? We have a new name now?”

“In this reality, yes, do you have a problem with that?” 

“Your name is Martin now? First, Dante, then Mozzie, now Martin?” Peter’s nose itches and when it does it usually means he needs to step out and get out.

Mozzie squirms a little in his seat and glares at Jackson. “Listen, I asked you here for a reason, please be a nice guest.”

“Oh, this is a great place, thank you for asking me to such a dump.”

“What’s your problem you’ve seen worse prisons than this,” Mozzie or Martin or whatever the hell his name is says.

So this Jackson is a criminal of some sort or another. He must be in league or had been in league with Neal at one time or another. Peter reaches in his pocket as the two bicker and displays his badge on the table.

“Listen, children, I don’t have a lot of time.” Even in the dull light of the bar, the badge gleams. 

Just at that moment the bartender chooses to walk up to their table. He has a cigar hanging out of his mouth which makes everything in this place all that more desirable. “You want anything?”

“The usual,” the imp creature says.

Jackson waves him off, clearly indicating to Peter that he must be working on a con or something. Peter does the same. He’ll keep his wits about him as well. The bartender doesn’t seem to care and just ambles off.

“You’re FBI,” Jackson says.

“Yes, Special Agent in Charge, White Collar New York division,” Peter says.

“What’s your clearance?”

“Why?”

Jackson shoves his hand in his pocket, and Peter tenses. Immediately, he opens his hands and says, “Just getting my ID.”

“Okay.” Peter remains on alert.

Jackson throws down an ID that comes straight from the Air Force, from Cheyenne Mountain. “What does Martin have you caught up in?”

Before Peter can reply, Mozzie places the pink scarab on the table. It glitters with its own energy. 

“Where did you get that?” Jackson says and picks up the item. He forgets his line of questioning and Peter, instantly and starts to examine the piece. “This is exquisite. The fine detail, you can tell it was faceted with one cut.”

“Not unlike the crystal skulls made by the Mayans, who also happen to be giant aliens,” Mozzie says and Peter presses his hand against his forehead. 

“What rabbit hole did I fall into?” Peter mutters.

“He isn’t wrong,” Jackson says but then adds, “About the crystal skull, forget the aliens part.” He stares at Mozzie as if he’s trying to get him to shut the hell up. Now, Peter isn’t sure if they are both deranged or that they both know something about conspiracies he just shouldn’t have stepped into. He does not want to find himself on a grassy knoll. 

“It is a precise piece of sculpture from the Ancient Egyptian times,” Jackson says and starts to pocket the item. “I’ll bring it back to the lab. I’ll be back in New York in about a month or so.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Peter says at the same time Mozzie starts to protest as well. “That’s the little guy’s, give it back.” Peter taps his badge twice before Jackson concedes and lifts the scarab on the table again.

The bartender brings over a glass of red wine for Mozzie and shuffles off without a word. 

“Okay, then why do you want me here? Are you making a new movie?” Jackson says; he looks exhausted like he wrangles weird issues every day for a living. 

“Not in this reality. Can we get over that for now?”

Jackson scowls at him but rolls his eyes and gestures for him to continue.

“How do I access the interdimensional portal?”

Jackson actually gives a loud one syllable laugh before shaking his head. “Why the hell do you think I would give you anything at all?”

Mozzie points to Peter. “The FBI has a treasure trove of lost Ancient Egyptian artifacts in their warehouse also known as the cave-.”

“How did you?”

Mozzie gives him the eye of silence, and then continues, “It might have some stuff that could lead you to some interesting, shall we say Ancient, information. He’ll help you access it if you help us with this little thing.”

“What?” Peter says.

“You really put your alliances together this time well, Marty.”

Mozzie glares at both of them as if giving them the stink eye would really stop them from looking at him like he dropped in from another planet. It occurs to Peter that Jackson is not looking at Mozzie that way at all, as if he knows a little more of the guy’s background than he’s letting on.

“Peter, come on, what are the Suits going to do with it anyway?” 

“Catalogue it and send it back to its rightful owners,” Peter says. “As soon as we bring in all the right experts.”

“Okay then, Doctor Jackson here is one of the best experts on Ancient Egypt that you’ll find. Let him catalogue what you have and then we’ll have a deal.”

Peter considers both of them for a minute, a full minute. Jackson doesn’t seem opposed to the idea, though he doubts that cataloguing old stuff is the stature of his job these days. He can practically see the guy salivating. He relents, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay then,” Mozzie says with his eyes sparkling and looks back at Jackson.

He picks up the piece again and examines it. “It’s part of an anhk, which was one of the ancient symbols of life. It is placed in the intersection of the cross.”

“Do we have to find a specific anhk in order to access the portal?” Mozzie leans in and Peter can’t help but mimic him. 

Jackson just shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders, and decides to go along with the little charade. “Sure, yes. But you won’t find it.”

“Why not?” Mozzie says.

“It was stolen out of the Egyptian museum during the riots a few years ago,” Jackson says. “People want it because with this, it is supposed to have the power of life and death.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Peter asks. 

Jackson shakes his head. “No idea. I know that this is similar to a crystal skull so it might have properties that are quite the same. Or it could be something very different.”

“Like out of Raiders of the Lost Arc?” Mozzie says. “I always like that scene with Harrison Ford in the little model of the city and the staff. Very cool.”

“That is so not real,” Jackson says. “Complete and utter fantasy.”

“And this isn’t?” Peter comments.

“Touche,” Jackson replies and smiles. “I like you, you remind me of someone. I’ll tell you this, if you find out who stole the anhk then you have a pretty good idea of getting the two together. That’s all I can tell you. I have no idea what properties the two together will offer you. What I can say, right now, this is worthless except as a very rare piece and diamond. It doesn’t do anything without the anhk.”

“Daniel.”

“Speak of the devil,” Jackson smiles as he stands. 

Peter turns around and realizes during the little trip down lollipop lane he’s completely lost track of the room and his surroundings. Stupid, stupid. 

“Jack,” Jackson says.

“Daniel.”

Jackson raises both of those thick eyebrows and says, “Jack.”

“You were supposed to be at the UN Security Council meeting two hours ago, what gives?” 

Jack has an Air Force General’s uniform on and the name O’Neill on his chest. Can this get any stranger? The General turns to Mozzie and grabs him, gives him a nuggie, and says, “Marty my old buddy. You bothering my archeologist?”

“Never,” Mozzie says and struggles out of his grasp.

Jacks notices Peter for the first time, and sees the badge still on the table. “Daniel, what did you do?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Peter says. No need getting the military officially involved in this. “Just needed his expertise on some of our recovered evidence.” Mozzie’s already palmed the little beetle.

“Listen, love to sit and talk but we really have to go. I got the meeting rescheduled. Actually I didn’t, Sam did, so can we get going. The big guy isn’t happy.”

“Big guy?” Mozzie asks.

“You know Murray,” Jack says and slings an arm around Jackson. “We’ll be going.” He ushers Jackson out the door without so much as a goodbye.

Peter stands there in a little bit of awe, a lot of shock, and a ton of confusion. “What the hell just happened?”

“Enough,” Mozzie says and tugs on Peter’s jacket to get him to sit down. “We have a problem.”

“I’ll say.”

“No, you don’t get it.” Mozzie’s face looks worse now than it did two days ago when he walked into Peter’s office.

“What don’t I get?”

“It looks like Matthew Keller is working with Adler and Kate.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Promises are made about the dog too.


	4. Detective Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter discusses the case with some colleagues while Mozzie finds some leads that will catapult them into a new web of deceit and intrigue.

“Actually this subject presents a very interesting dichotomy of genius interlaced with severe paranoid delusion. But what is even more interesting is that he seems to have appeared out of nowhere some time back near the turn of the century.”

Peter gazes at the monitor of his laptop and tries to comprehend exactly what the agent from the Behavioral Analysis Unit in D.C. is saying to him. He pinches the bridge of his nose and realizes over the last few days he’s had to deal with an unrelenting headache. He shifts his focus only momentarily to the cold and wind of the day. It started raining only a half hour ago, but it sounds more like freezing rain and he’s not at all interested in going out in it, even though he has an appointment to see the little guy.

Something strikes him half way through Spencer Reid’s diatribe on Mozzie aka Dante Haversham. “Wait, wait, wait. He just appeared out of the blue?”

The skype imagine isn’t the best and the feed freezes every now and then, but Reid keeps speaking through it, making everything very disjointed. The feedback doesn’t match up with the movement on the screen. It is very disconcerting but Peter ignores it. 

“Not really, he seems to have always existed, of course. There’s just a lag or a gap in the file. At one point it looks like he may have been a Hollywood producer. Some information points to evidence that he was the notorious Dentist of Detroit. But then that drops for a certain amount of time and he reappears some time ago in New York City. He supposedly worked alongside a Neal Caffrey and a Kate Moreau running cons throughout the city until Caffrey left for Europe. After Caffrey’s capture by you, Haversham disappeared again.” Reid’s image settles and the wild hair and bleak look of someone who doesn’t get enough sleep appears on the screen.

“But you said he’s a paranoid?”

“Yeah, conspiracies are us might have been founded by him. It’s a website and I’m not joking.” Reid looks down at the papers he’s flipping through and pulls one out. “Oh, and the expert he introduced you to, Doctor Daniel Jackson?”

“Yes? Don’t tell me he has a criminal record.” Peter eases back in his dining room chair. He knows he should have gone to work today, but it is Saturday and he did need a break from the constant buzz of the office. Elizabeth is working an event and the house feels cold and wanting. 

“Not exactly, but he’s considered a real quack.”

“A quack?”

“Some time ago he espoused that the pyramids in Egypt were landing pads for an ancient race of aliens. Right after he gave a seminar on that at an international archeology meeting, he dropped off the face of the Earth and I mean that literally. He essentially disappeared off the radar for a year.”

“Wow, that’s good. I don’t think most criminals are that clean when they try to disappear.”

“This guy is an expert at that, plus he died a few years back and seems to have resurrected from the dead.” Reid throws that one out like it’s a piece of meat and he’s surrounded by a pack of hungry dogs. He just wants to see how Peter will react. Peter knows that Reid profiles automatically like some people notice the make of car you have or the kind of smartphone you use.

He doesn’t react to the dead guy comment, just to irk Reid, but it really doesn’t surprise him. Nothing does anymore. It seems he plunged down the rabbit hole when Neal Caffrey died and fell right through the door to the Twilight Zone. “Okay, so we have a paranoid guy and a dead guy.”

“Something like that,” Reid says and looks to the side. 

“Well the dead guy did have a two star General come looking for him and his ID looked authentic from a distance, but I really didn’t get a chance to examine it, at all.”

“Well, Jackson isn’t highly regarded in professional circles. He hasn’t published in more than a decade.” Reid waves his hand to someone off screen. “Hey, Burke, I have to go. Planes to catch and all.”

“Okay, thanks for your insight.”

“Hey, if you hear anything more about Jackson send me an email. His file is interesting. Seems someone higher up has it tagged and most of its actually redacted. I couldn’t even get clearance to read it.”

“Then how did you get what you told me?” Peter asks.

“Tax records. Everyone has to pay taxes, even dead guys,” Reid says and signs off.

The blank screen pulses at him once, before he shuts down the laptop and opens up the paper file he's stored all the information on Neal's death. It has more than that, of course. It tells a story, a story that seems cut off, wrong, and tilted like the world suddenly swung too far on its axis. He pushes through the news clips, the police report, and sees the card he tucked in the file. Neal sent it, hand drawn of David in the lion's den. Was he trying to ask for help? Why this scene, why this painting? Peter opens the card and there's a little note.

‘Hope you have a happy birthday, Agent Burke.’

Scrawled on the outside back flap there was another message that Peter was never sure about, never understood. He thinks now he might have some clue, some idea about what it means.

‘My friend told me we would have been good for one another, we could have been the dynamic duo.’

He thought it had referred to their cat and mouse game and even told El at the time it wasn't the dynamic duo but instead Tom and Jerry show, where he felt like the cat most of the time. She'd raised her eyebrow and snickered with him a bit, rubbing his arm. It was before the phone call, the fated phone call where Neal told him to look for Adler and Kate and that his life was only about the music box. He wonders now, if that friend of Neal's who forecast a different reality, a different Neal and a different Peter - if that person had been Mozzie. 

The paranoid.

He frowns at the laptop. If Reid is to be believed, and he should considering he's a genius, then Peter is allowing himself to be led by the nose by a paranoid little man with delusions of aliens, conspiracies, and ideas of time travel. It all added up backwards, like 2 plus 2 suddenly equaled 2 again. He does feel like he's down the rabbit hole and he should be eating mushrooms. None of this feels right at all.

He tosses the little card onto the table and goes back to studying the case, a case he shouldn't be working on since he is in the white collar division and deaths of international criminals - really not his thing. He considers if he should get in touch with Diana in D.C., she might have some insight. He still wishes she'd been able to get out of there, but Kramer held her tight and she hadn't been able to transfer back to New York City. Christie left her over it, and wasn't that all kinds of wonderful?

He decides to leave Diana alone, for now. He might need to contact her later. Instead he looks at the files, the report of Neal's death. He'd been beaten and bruised before being tossed to his death.  
As he reads the report he can see it, how it went down, because Neal hadn't been just beaten and thrown over the overpass. He'd been tortured for days, and then finally killed. What had Kate thought, had she ever cared about him at all? Trauma to the face and head that had been days old, trauma to the chest wall and kidneys. Cracked ribs and several broken fingers. Who beat him? Who hurt him so much to destroy him?

Damn it, Neal, he thinks and gives in to his doubts.

Peter considers the photographs of a wrecked and ruined Neal. He opens up the laptop again and connects to through skype. It only takes a few tries to get Diana on the line.

"Hey Boss," Diana smiles. She's in running clothes and looks like she just finished a punishing work out. 

"Not your boss anymore, Di."

"Always will be," she replies. She sips some water from a bottle and says, "What can I do for you?"

"What, we can never just talk?" He laughs.

"Okay, sure why not? I'm taking the new ninja course at Quantico."

"Ninja? What the hell-?"

"Don't get your panties in a twist. It's a martial arts course. We just all call it Ninja." Diana says and drinks again. "So what's up?"

"Just the same old, same old."

"You have something new on James Bonds?" She finally sits in front of her computer and quirks a smile at him, challenging him to deny it.

"Maybe, could be. I'm just not sure," Peter says.

"Tell me." She settles in and waits.

"I got a strange kind of lead. It's from one of Neal's old associates." Peter rubs his temple and crunches up his face. He really doesn't want to admit he's following the Mad Hatter. Of course, that's not right - it is the damned late rabbit that leads Alice down the hole in the first place, but hell if he's going to admit he followed a bunny. 

Diana fills in the empty space. "He's not exactly who he says."

"Always the smart one," Peter says and misses her even more. He really wishes he'd been able to keep her in New York, but with the failure of the Dutchman case, she needed to transfer to keep her career alive. "And before you say it, I already consulted Reid out of BAU. He's fairly certain the guy's a quack and that his expert is the King of Quacks."

"But you don't think so?"

"I think so, but tell that to my gut," Peter replies.

"You always had a good gut feeling. The one time you didn't follow it, we lost Neal," Diana says and Peter knows she's right. He thought Kate wasn't right for Neal, that she'd said something or did something during that last meeting in prison. But he followed orders and continued to work on his case and a new agent just transferred from OPR followed Neal. It only took about two months for the higher ups to realize Fowler needed to be taken off the case and Peter replace him. It was a disaster of huge portions. Not only had they lost Neal, but they lost the Dutchman in the process. Peter never trusted Fowler after that.

"You're right."

"So what can I do for you, Boss," Diana says and puts special emphasis on the last word.

"Matthew Keller, I can't find much out on him. Can you dig up something for me? There seems to be a bunch of red alerts on him."

"Alerts?" Diana says, she leans closer as her interest is piqued. "What kind?"

"Every time I look him up in the database, it closes on me."

"Interesting. A suicide program," Diana says. "I'll see what I can look up in the State Department. I might have some contacts over there that will help us out." 

"Great," Peter says. "That would be great."

"No problem, Boss." Before she signs off, Diana adds, "And Boss, follow your gut, but be careful, okay?"

"Sure thing, Di, sure thing." The connection clicks off and Peter closes down the laptop again.

If he can find out about Keller then maybe, just maybe he'll have the lead he needs to find Neal's murderers and bring Kate and Adler to justice. As he stands to get some more coffee on this gray day the doorbell rings.

Crossing the living room he goes to the vestibule, looks out, and sighs. "How is this my life?" 

He swings open the door and the little imp like creature walks in. Peter looks to see if he has a cottontail anywhere or a large pocket watch. He doesn't, just a small transistor radio looking thing with a large amplifier hooked up to it.

"Have you swept for bugs lately?"

"We have Terminx every quarter," Peter replies knowing full well he's completely answering a different question.

"Very funny, Suit." Mozzie waves the amplifier around and listens to the pop and crackle over the radio. 

"You'd be surprised at how many of us are bugged and tagged and even embedded with GPS trackers."

Peter decides to ignore him and tracks over to the kitchen to pour some coffee. Maybe with enough caffeine he'll wake up and this will all come to a close. He pours the coffee, offers some to his visitor who just about turns green at the prospect, says to each his own, and drinks. It is good and mellow and he concentrates on it instead of the images of Neal's bashed in skull. Just as he takes his second taste, Mozzie starts to tramp upstairs.

"Hey, hey, get down from there," Peter says and tows him back into the living room. 

"It's your funeral, Suit." Mozzie shrugs and looks around. "Hey, speaking of which, where's Neal?"

Peter furrows his brows. Where's Neal? What the hell kind of question is that? Peter sputters over an answer. "D-dead?"

"Of course, he's dead. I wouldn't be here working with you, Suit, if he wasn't. Where are his ashes?"

"At the office?" Peter says but it's more like a question because really who the hell knows where they are going with this line of questioning.

"You left him at the office?" Mozzie huffs. "How cold are you? I always thought you suits were made of ice, now I know it."

"Okay, okay, I'll bring him home on Monday," Peter says and he has no idea how he's going to explain to Elizabeth why he has the ashes of a dead criminal on the mantle. 

"No time for that now, actually," Mozzie says. He places the transistor radio scanner thing down as if it's a precious gem. "Listen, can you get some time off?"

"Time off? Why?"

"Yes, time off. We have to get to London," Mozzie says and sneaks over to the window and peers out.   
"We don't have much time."

"London? Why do we have to go to London?" Peter cannot possibly believe that he's considering a trip with an insane paranoid delusional man. 

"Is everything a question with you?"

"If you would explain just a little bit of this, just like tiny miniscule portion of it, there wouldn't be that many questions!" Peter retorts and he feels like he needs to settle down, get a nap, maybe retire to a little island somewhere, like Cape Verde. He heard it was nice there.

"Okay, calm now before you split your liver or something," Mozzie says with raised hands. "I got some leads."

"What-." Peter stops himself and puts his hands on his hips waiting for the little imp to explain.

"I put some feelers out, but while I did that I also learned something from Neal's former land lady, June. She told me Neal mailed several packages to London right before Kate and Adler worked him over and killed him."

"Packages?"

"Yes, packages. She also told me that there was an agent from the FBI - not you - nosing around looking for information right after Neal died. He had a search warrant, and it ended up that he found some mail receipts. Those receipts found their way into Keller's hands."

"What? Evidence from the FBI?" Peter needs to talk with this June person. "Where's June? I need to talk with her directly."

"You don't understand," Mozzie says. "We have to get to London. Neal sent packages off to London but I think it was a ruse to keep Adler and Kate from knowing exactly where the scarab was. I think they think the scarab was sent to London."

"Who would Neal possibly send something to? I wouldn't think Neal would do that, because it would put that person in danger. Neal didn't like guns, he didn't like to put people in danger." His coffee is long forgotten as he concentrates on the puzzle before him. He loves puzzles and clues. 

“I think he sent the packages to keep Kate and Adler off my trail since I had the scarab. Plus, he sent them to someone he knows can handle himself." Mozzie smiles. "What you think you were the only person after Neal? The only one he played cat and mouse with?"

"Someone at the Yard?"

"No, not quite." Mozzie quips. "You ever hear of the world's only consulting detective."

Peter slowly shakes his head.

"Well, you will. You're about to meet Mister Sherlock Holmes."

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trying to update this as quickly as possible. If things slow down a bit it is only because of RL not letting me play. Thanks for any and all comments and kudos. Always appreciated!


	5. 221B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Mozzie are in London and confront two of Neal's killers. They come away with more of a mystery than they expected.

Before he can even knock on the black door with the numbers and letters designating 221B, it swings open and an older lady confronts him. She gives a little start and then there’s a bang and a clatter from the flat up the stairs. She looks at Peter a little harried, then frowns at Mozzie in a knowing kind of why which makes him think she actually might have interacted with the little imp before, but Peter doesn’t ask.

She turns to the stairs and cups her mouth to yell, “Really, they’re not blood sausages, Sherlock, they’re fingers.” Turning back to them, she smiles and says, “You can’t do that and expect civilized company to understand, now, can you?”

Peter blinks a few times because he’s partially sure he’s through the looking glass, now. He tries to offer her a smile back but he’s sure it is more of a grimace by the look on her face. 

Mozzie chimes in at that point and sticks out his hand. “We’d like to see Sherlock Holmes. I’m Dante Haversham.” When he says this Peter scowls at him, but he continues anyway. “And this is my associate, the Dentist of Detroit.”

“What?”

“I hadn’t heard that Sherlock was in need of an oral treatment, but then again, maybe it would do him good. Young people these days.” She opens the door wide and points to the stairs where the racket has not let up at all. “Tooth pain can lead to problems with the brain especially if an abscess bursts or something. That’s what I’ve heard.” 

Peter is about to correct her when Mozzie just tugs on his sleeve and leads him up the stairs. He’s not sure what the hell he’s doing all the way in London, on a cold rainy winter day. He hadn’t expected Hughes to give him the okay, but everyone in his circle of the world seems to have blurred out of focus since the little paranoid creature at his elbow came into their lives. 

He even tried to convince Mozzie that it would be better to just give the world’s only consulting detective a call, but that didn’t go over so well and asking for a face to face via video was not happening as well. According to Mozzie he didn’t want to see Sherlock in various stages of undress. So Peter conceded the issue knowing full well neither his wife nor his boss would agree to such an excursion. 

He was wrong.

He has no idea why he was wrong.

They climb the stairs and the door to the flat is open and said subject of his ruminations is standing at a table in the kitchen area with a large butcher knife and what looks like several severed human fingers. Peter chokes back the bile. 

Another man is sitting in a winged back chair reading the paper and completely ignoring the carnage that is currently occurring in the kitchen. Lying at his feet is what looks like a dead bull dog. 

“Jesus,” Peter mutters.

The tall man with the shock of wild dark hair and thin eyes and mouth looks at Peter and Mozzie, comments, “Americans, again,” and goes back to his work – or slaughter Peter isn’t sure what to actually call it.

Mozzie stands behind Peter and doesn’t introduce them which irritates Peter much more than it should, since when does Peter like to be led around by a creature which might or might not be insane? He rethinks that immediately – which is insane.

“Excuse me; we’re looking for a Mister Sherlock Holmes?” Peter focuses on the man in the chair with the dead dog at his feet. He’s hoping to God the dog is a stuffed canine and not an actual corpse.

The man in the chair doesn’t respond immediately which leads to the butcher at the table saying, “John, are we going to have another parade of Americans again? I’ve already discussed this; I am not interested in their reality show proposition. Completely and utterly boring.”

“What?” Peter says.

The man in the chair, Peter assumes John, looks up from his paper as if it is the first time he’s realized anyone else is in the flat. “Oh, oh.” He starts to get up and immediately trips over the dog. Only Peter’s outstretched arm stops him from toppling over into a table filled with packages and letters from the post. “Um, yes, thank you then.”

John looks down at the dog and then back at Sherlock. “You do realize that killing the dog you gave to me negates any feelings of good will I might harbor after the stunt you pulled off the hospital ledge.”

At this point, Mozzie decides to pop up from behind Peter and says, “He killed himself, last year.”

“What?” Peter says and cannot fit together how many people he now knows that died and came back to life, miraculously. 

“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Sherlock says.

“Mark Twain,” Peter replies.

“One of the few bright lights from across the pond.” Sherlock turns back to John. “He isn’t dead. I’m testing a new paralyzing agent on him, though I must admit testing it on an n of one is really not scientifically sound. Perhaps we can convince the Americans to do something worthwhile for once?”

“We saved your asses in World War II,” Peter says, for some reason he’s really insulted but at the same time feels obliged to argue.

“Tiring,” Sherlock says and puts down the knife to strip off the long black rubber gloves he’s wearing. “Why is it, Americans, completely forget about the intervening years where they essentially fought wars by proxy with the Soviet Union and/or China in several undeveloped countries across the world thereby leading to the imbalance of power and religious fervor besetting most of the world today.”

“Britain isn’t innocent.”

“I didn’t say it was, in fact my brother Mycroft most probably practices some of the same designs and schemes even today. No, in fact, I know he does.” Sherlock says and joins John in the lounge. “Now, why are you cluttering up my flat?”

Mozzie appears again from behind Peter’s back and says, “We’re here to retrieve whatever Neal Caffrey sent you before his death.”

“And you would be?” John asks.

Before Mozzie can introduce them with his ridiculous pseudonyms, Peter jumps in and says, “I’m Special Agent Peter Burke of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and this is Mozzie Haversham, one of Neal’s closest friends.” He’s not sure Haversham is actually Mozzie’s last name but he has to throw in something.

Sherlock narrows his eyes at them and tilts his head. “So far out of your district, Agent Burke?”

“We’re here on a murder investigation that might have something to do with a stolen treasure,” Peter says and leaves it at that.

“No, no you’re not.” Sherlock looks Peter up and down and shakes his head. “You are not a murder investigator.” He points to his shoes and coat. “Although you don’t have a gun on you now, you hold your arm like you normally have a shoulder holster, so you are in police work. I’ll give you the FBI because you said it like it was second nature to you. Your coat, while bought off the rack, is fairly well kept and clean with only stains of coffee, ink, and a bit of oil paint.” He flicks a finger at Peter’s lapel. “Your shoes are sensible but not made for running, a murder investigator would have something sensible but able to run in them. Probably an analyst but closer to a division which looks into finance and art crimes.” He gives a brief glance to Mozzie and says, “And his name is not Mozzie Haversham.”

“That a little bit amazing,” Mozzie says.

“Try living with him,” John mutters under his breath.

Peter says, “No, I’m not a murder investigator. I work in the White Collar division in New York City. A criminal I’ve been in pursuit of for some time was recently murdered and we have information that led us to believe he sent something to you before he died.”

Sherlock looks down at John. “Remarkable.”

“What’s that, now?” Johns says.

“We had American visitors yesterday,” Sherlock says.

“What? When?” Johns says but just then the dog yawns and fumbles about on the carpet like it’s coming out of deep sedation which Peter thinks it probably is.

“Who were these American?” Mozzie says.

Sherlock curls a lip at them and says, “Why is it, Americans are always so rude?”

“Why is it the British are always so uptight?”

John pinches the bridge of his nose after he pats the dog on his side. He drops his hand and says, “Sherlock, who were the other Americans?”

“I’ve no idea, I told them to go away. They were boring.”

“Boring as in how?” Peter asks following John’s lead.

Sherlock glowers at him and he thinks for a minute that he’s being placed in the category of boring as well until the detective says to him, “You’re not working this case officially, it’s personal to you. I can see the exhaustion in your eyes, the sorrow in every line of your face. What did this criminal mean to you?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Agent Burke, you’ve taken a plane all the way from New York to hunt down a killer of a man who was just a criminal to you. Even Watson here can tell that there’s more to it than that.”

John stutters out a reply but Peter talks over him.

“Fine,” Peter says through a growl and gritted teeth. “Neal didn’t deserve what happened to him. He was a gentleman’s criminal. He didn’t like guns and he hated violence. When I arrested him, he shook my hand and thanked me for finding his girlfriend – his girlfriend who eventually betrayed him and threatened his family. He ended up escaping from prison to help said girlfriend to stop her Daddy Warbucks from hurting someone close to him. Instead, all he got was a torture session, a bashed in skull, and a trip to the morgue. I think I would like justice to be served.”

“And you think you can get it by coming here?”

“I think the Americans who you found boring yesterday are the same ones who killed Neal,” Peter counters. “I think they’ll come back and try and kill you for what he sent to you.”

“I think you under estimate me, Agent Burke.”

“Well, don’t under estimate me, Sherlock Holmes.”

He stares at the man, he doesn’t shift his gaze, doesn’t blink. He just waits until Sherlock sighs once and says, “All right then, we’ll do this your way.”

“My way?” Peter says at the same time Mozzie coughs up, “Our way?”

Just as Sherlock starts to answer them, the downstairs door slams open and a shout from the senior lady that let them in is heard. 

“Mrs. Hudson?” John calls.

“That will be the other Americans, I’m sure,” Sherlock says and steps away from the group to confront them as they enter the flat.

Kate and a man Peter doesn’t recognize right away come into the lounge area. Peter guesses from the file Diana sent him that the man is Keller. His eyes are cruel and heartless; he looks like he eats fingers for breakfast. Peter knows in his gut this guy is responsible for most of the torture Neal endured. Adler wouldn’t dirty his nails with that kind of thing and he’s not sure Kate is that cold, but he could be wrong.

Keller and Kate have guns, of course they do. Because in a country where people are not supposed to have easy access to guns, the Americans found that access. 

“How quaint, just like an American greeting card,” Sherlock says and he leans against the desk near the window. 

Keller pushes past Kate and glares at Mozzie. “Keeping some strange company, I see.”

“What company I keep, Mister Keller is neither your business nor your concern,” Sherlock says and his hand drifts to the desk. “John, could you please check on Mrs. Hudson.”

Keller chuckles a bit and shakes his head. “I don’t think so, that’s not how this works.”

Peter notices the sweat dripping across Keller’s brow, the slicked hair, and the dead eyes. Something inside of Peter, deep inside of Peter tells him this guy is more than a threat, he’s a killer and he likes it, he enjoys doing horrible things to people. 

“Oh really, then please enlighten me, how does this work?” Sherlock says, but his right hand is completely hidden by the piles of books on the desk. Peter shifts and looks over to Keller who starts to pace around the room. Whatever Holmes is planning on doing, he better do it now. 

He doesn’t. He stays perfectly still and listens as Keller waves the gun around and threatens everyone. 

Kate wavers a little when she looks at Peter, like she’s regretting something, not everything, but she sees the accusation in his eyes and she’s wilting under his stare. “Come on, Matthew.”

Keller shakes his head and glances over at the kitchen table littered with different kinds of horror. “My, Mister Holmes, you do seem to have some strange hobbies. Perhaps we can work out a deal.”

“A deal?”

“I don’t shoot you and you give me what Neal sent you in the mail.”

“I’m not certain what you are referencing. What post?” Sherlock eyes Watson for a second and the shorter man only nods once. 

Peter tenses and backs into Mozzie, grabbing his wrist, and getting ready to move. Just as Keller reaches for the butcher knife, Sherlock grabs what Peter can only think of as a walking stick from the desk, whips it in an arc at Kate, who drops the gun and yelps while Keller both tosses the knife and aims the gun. Sherlock as if he’s countered every move already, flings a book in the air which gets impaled by the knife instead of his heart while John says one word.

“Bone.”

The dog leaps into action as if it didn’t just take part in some unethical experiment. It bounds from the hassock and catapults itself at Keller. The dog is hopelessly outmatched with the gun and Keller’s height but it is enough of a distraction that Sherlock twists the walking stick to reveal a concealed blade. He spears Keller through the jacket and nails him to the wall, all without stabbing into his flesh. Peter steps in as Keller jerks at the knife to wrench his arm and yank the gun free. 

He picks up Kate’s gun as well and aims it at Keller. “I think we’re done here.”

Sherlock grabs Keller’s throat and shoves him up against the wall. “I’m hardly keen on having people come to my flat and threatened me with a gun let alone Mrs. Hudson.”

 

“It might be of use for you to know the last time an American threatened Mrs. Hudson he ended up tossed out the window,” John says and pats the dog on the head. 

Mozzie backs into the door way to block any escape path. Kate looks broken and falters a bit. Peter just wants to beat the crap out of everyone.

Mozzie pipes in then and says, “The post, Mister Holmes?”

“Oh yes,” Sherlock says and tightens his fist around Keller’s throat. “John, please, the packages on the table.”

“Here,” John picks up several small boxes and hands them to Mozzie. “I’ll be checking on Mrs. Hudson, then.”

“Yes, please do. Though he won’t actually help at all, please contact Lestrade.”

John grumbles at that but doesn’t reply as he moves past Mozzie to the stairs. Peter peers over the three packages on the table. Two are open with little origami flowers in them. He takes out each of the flowers and reads the verse on them.

“What does it mean?” Peter asks. 

“Look at the contents of the third box, if you will.”

Peter flips open the lid and sees what looks like a small glowing jewel encased in a glass box. Mozzie is at his side studying the verses and the box. 

“That isn’t the ankh,” Mozzie comments and Peter frowns. 

“Thank you for stating the blatantly obvious,” Peter snaps.

Even as he says it, he hears Keller snicker and then cough and choke against Sherlock’s hand. He crosses the room and points the gun at Keller. “I think you can let him down now.”

Sherlock eyes him once and there’s a reply on the tip of his tongue, Peter is sure of it but John appears at the door way again and announces that Mrs. Hudson is unharmed and that the Yard is on their way. Sherlock eases up on his hold of Keller, straightens his sweater vest, and steps away. 

“Where’s the ankh?” Peter asks. 

“You think I’m gonna tell you, Burke? I ain’t got a reason in hell to tell you anything.”

“How about the fact the Egyptian Museum you stole it from has you on video surveillance? How about the idea of spending the next thirty years in an Egyptian prison?” Peter says. 

In a flash, Sherlock’s hand is back at Keller’s throat. It seems faster, quicker than normal but Peter puts that down to the blur of days and the jet lag. “The ankh?”

“I didn’t think you Brits liked to resort to violence,” Mozzie says.

“I can understand the allure of it that causes so many Americans to fall under its spell,” Sherlock says and turns back to Keller. “The ankh.”

The answer doesn’t come from Keller, but from behind them, from Kate. “It isn’t here. It’s in the States. I can tell you how to get it. If-.” She leaves it at that, there’s the sounds of sirens down the street. They don’t have much time to clear this up.

“If you can leave now?”

She slowly nods her head. Keller squirms under Sherlock’s grip but he holds him still. 

“Tell me,” Peter says.

“It’s in a locker at Grand Central Station in New York City,” she says. She gives them the locker number. “I didn’t bring the key with me.”

“No need,” Mozzie says and he seems satisfied.

“You’re going to believe her?” Peter says. There’s pounding on the door. They have to move now. 

“I don’t have much of a choice, anyhow she’s had her run, she knows it’s over.”

Peter isn’t sure what that means but Scotland Yard appears. He’s not sure what he’s accomplished except he has a glowing jewel in a box, two origami flowers with a message from the dead, the probable location of the ankh, and Neal’s killers in a room with no evidence whatsoever to hold them on that crime.

He curses and hates his life, just a little bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter twice. I played around with different angles and different ways to write what I needed to state. I hope this works and people are still interested in this little mystery!


	6. Five by Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I don't even know.....

“Yeah, you ain’t getting nowhere with that thing, not like that.”

Peter rubs the bridge of his nose and thinks that maybe, just maybe he should give Neal a resting place in the middle of the ocean somewhere and just let his life get back to normal. He thinks that life used to involve going to work, coming home to a great wife, having a lovely dinner, possibly watching a game and maybe even a little bit of a roll in the hay with the same great wife. 

Now, his life has turned on its head and no one, he swears, no one is talking sense or straight anymore. He thinks his eye sockets might actually be on fire. It takes all the restrain he can muster not to go and look in the mirror to check for flames around the edges of his eyeballs.

No sooner had they arrived back from London – and seriously a day in England and then flying back home does wonders for the internal clock – but the little imp paranoid creature who has taken over his life leads him to Grand Central Station where he picks the lock on the numbered locker. 

Lo and behold, the ankh is actually there. They bring it back to Peter’s house, and put it with the little pink beetle – nothing happens. He’s not sure he expected anything to happen but after all the fanfare and the wasted thousands of dollars on air fare he kind of expected something, maybe a little bit of a flash or a sizzle. Instead, it just sat there dead on his dining room table. 

Mozzie played with it a few times; placing the beetle a few different ways but nothing changed the outcome. Elizabeth is away on a business trip and when Peter called her up to report about the ill-fated London trip which left Keller in custody of Scotland Yard, Kate on the run, and that weird ass duet Sherlock Holmes and John Watson further investigating something about a gigantic hound. El just giggled at the last part and told him to promise to keep at it, because she was sure there would be an answer. According to her, things didn’t feel right.

What the hell did that mean, anyway?

When Peter called Hughes to tell him they were back in town with little to go on, his boss only sighed through the phone and told him to try harder. What the hell? Try harder for what? He thinks he might be on some demented carousel and the operator won’t let him off. After all, he’s not a murder investigator. When he reminds Hughes of this, he only gets the heavy sigh into the phone again which just telegraphs agitation so Peter agrees to keep at it.

At what? Enabling everyone’s complete and utter breakdown.

He is considering whether or not there was a large cyclone that hit New York City at some time and he’s been flung into the land of Oz or something. 

At one point during the inspection of the ankh and the beetle, Peter suggested they consult the dead guy again. “You know that archeologist that works for the Air Force.” Like that makes sense on any level or anything.

“Oh, can’t.” 

“Why not, is he dead again?”

“Not that I know of, he’s just not likely to be anywhere that’s actually reachable for the foreseeable future,” Mozzie had said and left it at that. He stares at Peter with a grin that only looks like the Cheshire cat, but really isn’t. Peter isn’t convinced. “Of course, he could be dead again. He has a tendency to do that, just like on that cartoon, you know. South Park?”

“What?”

“Anyway, not available in any way for a long time,” Mozzie says.

“Of course not, that makes complete sense,” Peter said.

“Glad you understand, Suit.” Mozzie nodded and picked up his phone. “I have other sources.”

So now he has a young woman in his house that Peter really really thinks might not be too savory. She’s has long dark hair, eyes that look like pools in the night, and way too much eye makeup on. She struts around his house like she owns it and keeps picking up things and inspecting them. Once in a while she eyes him up and down like she might want to flip him or something. He’s glad his guns are locked up but not so happy about the knives sitting on the counter in the kitchen – openly available for any assassin.

Mozzie had ushered her in the house without so much as a Suit, this is insert name here, and she’s here to help us out on this crazy ass mission thing. Nothing. He just slunk to the table and showed her the ankh and beetle.

“Are you sure there isn’t a Watcher out there that might be able to figure it out?” Mozzie says.

“Well, Miles is dead and last I heard Wesley bit the big one during the apocalypse that hit L.A. back in the day,” she says and picks up the ankh. For a second Peter thinks she might throw it across the room like some kind of Ninja weapon. 

Peter forces himself not to process what she said about an apocalypse. He will not think about it. Nope, not at all. He stands there with his arms crossed and tries to remember exactly why he wanted to do this in the first place. A cold chill, the horror of Neal’s demise sneaks in and sends its deathly finger up his spine. 

“I’m sorry, but have we met? Can you tell me who the hell this is?” Peter says to Mozzie. “This is my house and I don’t like to entertain crazy people on a regular basis even though it might seem that way.” 

Mozzie grumbles at him for a moment and huffs at him. “You haven’t met her, not now. Not here. At least as far as I know. I think not.”

“What?”

“She might be, at one time or another, but not this time or another an archeologist, but a criminal archeologist-.”

“She’s a criminal archeologist? What does that even mean?”

“Hey, hey.” She raises her hands as if to fend off the little imp. “I am not an archeologist. Criminal, might be, but definitely not an archeologist.”

“You see dead people?” Mozzie asks.

“Christ, no, do you?” She frowns at both of them. Peter just shrugs his shoulders and starts looking for the migraine medicine in the cupboards. 

“Not that I know of,” Mozzie answers.

“Well actually, I might if you count vampires and zombies and other flesh eating monsters,” she says. “But it’s cool. Good. So what do you want?”

“Vampires? Zombies?” Peter says. Now he really has fallen off the deep end. He considers whether or not he might have been checked into an insane asylum at one point and these people are all a delusion of his own. Maybe Neal’s dead set off a chain reaction and he succumbed to some kind of insanity. It could happen, though the rationale behind that conclusion makes no sense to him. Why would Neal’s death drive him to insanity?

“Oh, Suit, meet Faith, a vampire slayer,” Mozzie says. “Also a convicted murderer but she was going through a phase.”

“A murderer?” Peter thinks he feels a vein in his head actually pop. “You brought a murderer into my house?”

“Hey, don’t bug out on me. We’re five by five.” She snaps her gum at him, but the arch of her brow and the way she looks at him isn’t calming at all. It rattles his teeth and squeezes his heart. 

“Five by five, see Suit?” Mozzie says and points to her as if that’s supposed to make some sort of sense at some level.

It does not.

“I don’t even know what that means.”

Mozzie choses to completely ignore him; but that is okay because he thinks he might need to get drunk or drunker because he must be absolutely smashed. There is no way in hell he is anywhere near sober. 

She ignores him and goes to the ankh and beetle again. They have them laid out on the table for her to look at along with the origami flowers which are now just pieces of paper with strange writing on them and the glowing gem.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before. But if I did at one point because of the criminal archeology gig, I would say that the gem has something to do with the beetle.”

“Why?” Mozzie asks.

“Well, look at its head. The gem looks like it might fit into its brain or something?” She cracks her gum. “But hell I don’t even know. This shit is completely fucked up. You know if you want to figure out how this thing works you need a couple of experts.”

“Don’t I know it,” Peter whispers, he knows they need to find a few doctors, maybe a nice comfortable bed somewhere. He cannot remember the last time he slept. Since Neal’s death, he hasn’t slept well. Hell, since Neal escaped from prison everything’s felt tilted, narrowed, and off centered. Shit, he suddenly understands what the hell everyone is talking about – it doesn’t make him feel any better. 

“No, seriously, Suit man,” Faith says. “Look, this thing, Moz told me controls life and death, right?”

“From what I’ve been told,” Peter says and decides now would be a good time to sit. He pulls out a chair and just sinks into it. 

“Well the scarab thing and the ankh go together. But what about the glowing gem? It could fit into the beetle, but maybe it does something else? Maybe it powers the thing?” She tosses the little scarab back and forth between her hands. 

“Should we just slip it in and see what it does?” Mozzie asks.

She places the scarab down on the table and peers at the glowing gem. It seems to give off its own aura of energy. “The gem looks like a chip off of something larger. You could do it, but you might blow something up like the world and everything. I’m not Willow, I don’t really give a damn.” Faith laughs a little like that would be a good thing and shakes her head. “Hell, I’d do it, but I know Buffy would want more study. She’s always been the cautious one. But heck I didn’t sleep with two vampires. I just like to stake ‘em in the heart, ya know?” 

“Yeah sure,” Mozzie mumbles and, for the first time, Peter is fairly certain that Mozzie is terrified of her. This little fact does not assuage Peter’s current state of anxiety.

“So, do you think we could get in touch with this Buffy person?” Peter asks.

Faith rolls her eyes. “Listen, when she’s not pining over one vampire or another, she’s busy trying to save the world with the rest of her slayers. So I would say probably not. Anyway, I think she was taking an extended vacation or some shit.” 

“So the Watchers are out, and Buffy isn’t available. Anyone else who might help us figure this thing out? Tell us what the verses mean on the papers?” Mozzie asks.

She screws up her face which really doesn’t do anything at all her extraordinary looks. She really is pretty. Peter chides himself for even thinking it. She raises her eyebrow as if she can read his mind and says, “Well, I don’t know about the verses, but maybe the gem. It’s an energy source, maybe.”

“Could be,” Peter says. He has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about but since everyone else in his fantasy seems to talk like it all makes sense, he decides he is going to go ahead and pretend to. It might be fun for a bit. 

“Then consult someone who knows a lot about energy sources.” She shrugs. “I might’ve slept with a guy couple years ago who’s into clean energy now.”

“Could you maybe get in touch with him for us?”

She giggles low in her throat and it doesn’t sound like it is sweet but a little lusty and Peter’s face reddens as she smirks. “Oh yeah, I could so call him. I’ll get you to see him.”

“Great, great.”

It should be great, they are making strides. Right? 

Ha!

Peter only shakes his head as she digs her cell phone out of her pocket and hits the screen. 

Where the hell were they going now? 

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just kind of ran on its own. I am not even sure what the heck it is about - except to get to the next two chapters. Hope it was fun anyway....


	7. Three Musketeers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Mozzie visit the three musketeers and find a new clue to solve the riddle of Neal's death.

This isn’t right at all, Peter knows this. He feels it in his bones. Something about the whole set up reeks of fantasy. He stares up at the large, open lobby and frowns. No one in all of New York City owns their own skyscraper. People don’t own buildings, corporations do. He cannot believe that one man, just one man owns this place. It must be owned by his company, but Mozzie insisted differently when they exited his Ford Taurus and walked up to the building.

He’d studied it when they approached the looming monstrosity in the middle of lower Manhattan. It stuck up in the sky like it was jerking its finger to the universe. What the hell was that all about? It looked like it’d been smashed up and down the sides of it, which didn’t really make sense since it was a brand new building. It only had one letter up near the time. A stylized A. It looked silly and stupid and lonely and Peter couldn’t figure out a damned reason he was standing in front of it.

He now thinks he might be trying to avoid his grief. He has to admit to himself at some point along the way that yes, he’s mourning over a criminal, someone he barely knew, but also knew in many intimate ways. Losing Neal is something of a loss to him, more than a loss, it digs a hole in his heart and he doesn’t know why.

Peter comes to accept that he’s decided to run amok around the City and even around the world, chasing after a little imp like creature because he doesn’t want to face reality without the smart, bright eyed, James Bonds. He doesn’t want to accept that possibly – if he’d tried harder – he could have saved Neal. He could have brought Neal to the right side of the law, brought him some peace, given him some much needed guidance in life. It hurts deep in the hollow of his chest when he thinks of the possibilities of Neal, when he realizes how much Neal had to offer the world and how little the world gave him. 

In the end he accepts his strange little walk down wonderland’s path because he thinks it might be a little bit about closure. If the people in his life are allowing him the time to settle these thoughts in his head, to get some calmness, some serenity about the fact he failed in his duty to help someone find justice and safety, then he assents to it willingly. 

Standing in the middle of a huge lobby for a skyscraper, doubts swirl around his head. At least, he thinks, he’s getting to see one of the tallest buildings in the City, owned by a single man. There’s a tall slender woman with strawberry blonde hair talking to Mozzie, but Peter keeps scanning the area as if something familiar might spark some recognition about the place. 

“When was this built?” Peter says and rotates a finger in the air as they cross to the bank of elevators.

The woman laughs low in her throat but cuts it off. “Well, you know, before the great invasion as they say. Or whatever, I try not to think about it. It just gives me bad memories of the future.”

That makes no sense. Peter raises an eyebrow but Mozzie slaps at the air to keep him from questioning her. He tries to anyway but as he does she states the floor and the elevator starts to ascend to the penthouse.

Her phone goes off, vibrating half-way through the ride and she answers it with a slightly annoyed grimace. “I’m busy taking care of your visitors right now. Don’t you think you could at least be there to – what? No, I don’t like the idea. What?” She pauses and listens. “The thought of having to survive an avalanche never occurred to me until I started working for you.” 

He keeps his eyes focused on the highly polished elevator door as she continues to talk with someone on the phone. 

“I have no idea, really.” She makes some apologetic gestures and he just waves her off. “I could ask him, but he does live in his suite in the Tower. You could do it yourself. What? Yes, he lives here, they all do. You invited them, yourself. You know after the big team building event.”

The door slides open and they walk into a large open living space. It is sleek and chrome and metal and gleams with future until a large blonde man walks into the living space with a bowl and a spoon. He’s dripping milk all over the floor and he’s eating like he’s starving. 

He isn’t starving. At all. Especially since he’s only wearing a muscle t-shirt and khaki pants. Chewing, he says something that might be – ‘hello, -- need -- pepper.’ But that doesn’t sound right at all – who puts pepper on cereal?

“Where are you?” the woman screams into the phone.

The blonde just turns around and looks behind him as if she’s talking to him, then he sees the phone and says, “Oops, phone. Still can’t get used to how tiny they are these days. You fellas here to see Tony?”

“Yes, yes they are.” Tony appears from the same direction that the blonde guy came from and winks at the woman. “Hey, Pep, thanks for the escort.”

“You’re impossible. You knew he was here all the time,” she says and points to the massive man walking toward what looks like a conversation pit in the middle of the room. He throws himself onto the couch without spilling the milk again.

“Hey, Cap, you know you’re cleaning up this mess of milk.” Tony glances at them but looks back at the man who apparently is called Cap. “Why the hell are you eating cereal at two in the afternoon?”

“Hungry.” Cap calls back but does turn around.

Tony shakes his head and wipes his hands on a towel that has grease and oil stains all over it. “He’s always hungry.”

“Growing boy,” Cap calls.

Tony rolls his eyes and rubs his strangely barbered goatee. He doesn’t offer his hand. “Stark, Tony Stark. Faith called me and said you needed a favor?”

“Who’s Faith?” Cap says and peers over his shoulder.

“Best you not know, boy scout.” Tony escorts them over to the bar and comments. “Don’t want to ruin virgin ears.”

“I heard that,” Cap grumbles.

“Fuck a duck,” Tony says and smiles at Peter. “What’s the issue?”

“Special Agent Peter Burke, FBI,” Peter says and points to Mozzie. “He may or may not be Mozzie Haversham, I really don’t know.” He thinks he’s finally getting the hang of this little bizarro world he’s walked into lately.

“Well,” Tony considers both of them. “It may or may not be of any interest to me what you two are selling.”

“Tony, I have to get back to the board, seriously. I am not your assistant anymore. I can’t be doing this for you.”

“You’re right, Cap is my assistant.”

“Am not.”

“Then how exactly do you earn your way?” Tony says a little curse word under his breath which may or may not be something to do with a sexual act.

“I heard that,” Cap says again.

“I wanted you to,” Tony snickers but gives the woman a quick peck on the cheek and she exits telling him to behave and to take his vitamins. “Tyrant. All women are tyrants or assassins.”

“You only say that because you live with an assassin. And Pepper is sweet, she is not a tyrant,” Cap says but Tony ignores him.

“Now what can I do you for?” Tony asks, rubbing his hands together. “Faith said you had some kind of energy source?”

“Yes,” Mozzie says and lifts the canvas bag he’s carrying. It has the ankh, the beetle, and the gem in it. The verses are in Peter’s pocket. 

“Faith’s an interesting girl. You know, she’s very bendy, can break your pecker right off*.”

“What?”

“Just don’t go to bed with her,” Tony says and leans in as if he’s conspiring. “Don’t tell the Captain this, but she very nearly sucked my dick right off.”

“I heard that, too.”

“That’s because you’re a pervert and only listen for the stuff about sex.” Tony quirks his eyebrows at them. “He’s sexually frustrated. Maybe I should introduce him to Faith. What do you think, little man?”

“I try not to get involved in matter of the heart.”

“Who said anything about the heart; this is one hundred percent a matter of the flesh,” Tony says. “He doesn’t know anything about sex; he’s like a ninety year old teenager.”

“You’re disgusting, Tony,” the Captain says through a mouthful of cereal. “And I was in the army, Tony, I know enough. I’m just a gentleman about it.”

It comes out a little less honorable because he’s slurping the milk from the bowl the entire time. As Peter turns back to Tony and tries to forget the whole conversation, because heck he needs to forget a lot about this week anyway, he digs open the bag and pulls out the box with the gem in it. 

“Do you mind if we get back to business?” Peter says and taps the little box.

Tony screws up his face and leers at Peter a bit before he turns his concentration back to the box on the bar. He flips it open and starts when he sees the shining gem. It glitters and pulses with its own glow. He feigns a little bit as if he’s startled by it, but Peter can tell immediately that he knows what it is, that it worries him, that they are walking in dangerous waters, and he hadn’t even know they were near water.

“Oh, Captain my Captain?” Tony raises his arm and gives the Captain a quick flick of his hand to wave him over to the bar. 

“What is it now, Tony, not really interested in your newest high school prank.” The Captain is currently paging through a large sketch book that had been sitting on the coffee table. He’s studying some of the drawings and murmuring to himself. 

“Come, look, be amazed,” Tony says.

Tossing the sketch pad back onto the table, the Captain trudges up the steps to the main room and joins them at the bar. “You have anything to eat back there?”

“Olives, you bottomless pit,” Tony says. “Looky, looky. Remind you of anyone?” Tony slides the box over to the Captain and then pitches a jar of olives over the bar as well. The Captain grabs it out of the air without even looking up to catch it. 

“Is this some kind of joke?” The Captain, who has blue eyes like Neal’s, glares at Peter. “Where’d you get this?”

“Portland,” Mozzie deadpans. “Why the hell does that matter? We need to know if we can put it into the little beetle and make someone come back from the dead.”

“Oh that makes all kinds of sense, and here I thought my world was fucked up. Where did you come from little man?” Tony says.

“Don’t ask,” Peter mutters and then says, “Listen, we need to know what this gem is. A friend of ours –.” He stops, he never realized he would ever use the term friend to describe Neal, but he has and he goes with it. “Died over it and the other articles in the bag.”

“Died?” Tony asks.

“Like in killed, bit the big one, said his last farewell, you get it?” Mozzie says and his voice shakes a little too much so Peter puts his hand on his shoulder to steady him. 

“What else is in the bag?” the Captain asks and suddenly Peter wonders what the young kid is even a captain of – how can he be a captain since he can’t be more than 23 or 24 years old?

Mozzie gathers himself up enough to be able to pull the scarab and the ankh out of the bag. Tony picks up the beetle and tilts it toward the light as if to examine the small port on the front of it where it looks like the gem might sit. 

The Captain nudges the box with his finger. “This looks like something Hydra might have used in one of their guns. Like some kind of gem infused with the energy of -.”

“Yeah, yeah, it does,” Tony says. “Been a year since we saved the fucking world and you walk in with a fucking ridiculous story. Who the hell are you?”

“Is it an energy source or not?” Peter asks and takes a step back from Tony. His eyes are gleaming in the daylight, his face a twisted expression of anger and worry. 

“Yes, of course it fucking is. Who the hell are you really working for Agent Burke? Did Fury send you?” 

Peter raises his hands in surrender; he’s not sure what is going on. This guy seems to have delusions of grandeur that everyone around him allows to persist. Really, he thinks he saved the world? From what? Big bad aliens, and what the hell is a Hydra? Right now, Peter thinks it is better left unasked. He pulls out his badge. “I’m from the FBI. I don’t know who this Fury is and I am investigating a murder of a criminal who was in possession of this little trinket.”

“Little trinkets with a tendency to blow up the world,” Tony murmurs. He settles a degree when the Captain whispers something in his ear. “Okay, old man, I’ll look at it in my lab.”

At first, Peter wants to protest the label of old man, until he realizes that Tony just addressed the youngest person in the room as old man. That makes no sense, but what does these days?

“JARVIS, we’re going down to the lab, please secure all sensitive documents, materials. Oh shit, just secure everything and leave out my tools.” 

Peter looks around for this JARVIS person but sees no one enter the room yet a voice answers, “Yes, sir.” Peter figures it must be some kind of intercom or something. 

Tony starts toward the elevator and when they don’t follow, he waves them over with a look of complete disdain on his face. “Come on, I don’t have all day, and patriot boy here is going to need to eat again soon.”

Captain or patriot boy or old man just scowls at Tony but it looks more playful than anything else. He scoops up the items and tosses them back in the canvas bag, carrying it for Mozzie as they head toward the lift. 

“I can take that,” Mozzie says and reaches for the bag.

Tony claps Mozzie on the back and shakes his head. “You really don’t know much about dear old Freezer Pop, do you? Politeness was all the rage back in his day, wasn’t it Pops?”

“Having manners never goes out of style, Tony,” the Captain says. The elevator dings and they all get into the car. 

“I’m not sure about this whole thing,” Mozzie says which does not lead Peter to any amount of assurances that they are not being led down the primrose path. 

“Welcome to the club,” Peter mutters. He cannot comprehend half of what has been spoken in the last few days. As the elevator descends he decides to ignore the references to saving the world (does it have anything to do with the apocalypse back in L.A. that Faith mentioned?) and the fact that this Stark person happens to be a person of some importance that he’s never heard of before in his life and the other one, the kid, seems to have stepped out of a time machine or something. 

“Here we go,” Tony says and the elevator stops on a sub-floor of the building. “JARVIS?”

“All items and documents are secure, sir.” Tony steps out of the lift without another word but it is the Captain who says a thanks to the unseen assistant. Tony chuckles a little. “Really, Steve? Always?”

“Being polite isn’t a hardship, Tony,” Steve says. “And I’m sure JARVIS appreciates it.”

“I do, Captain Rogers, you’re welcome.”

Tony grumbles to the room at large as they walk into a spacious laboratory/workshop. It must be larger than the entire bullpen in the White Collar unit. There are several benches with tools scattered over the surfaces and a batch of computer interfaces clumped in the middle of the space. There are a few doors along the farthest wall that are sleek and steel and most obviously locked. A man with baggy clothes, glasses slipping down his face, and a mess of dark hair walks into the workshop just as they enter.

“Banner, we have company,” Tony says and thumbs behind him. “Fury sent the FBI on our tails with some kind of tesseract chip.”

“I don’t know a Fury,” Peter says.

“What’s a tesseract?” Mozzie asks and for once Peter is strangely satisfied that Mozzie is as confused as he is during this little trip. 

For a second, Peter wonders if someone might have slipped something into his food or drink and he might be having a drug induced dream. He casts that aside because he really thinks that dreaming of strange men is far afield of his fantasies. At least, he thinks so, but he has no damned idea anymore.

“Best you not know,” the Banner fellows says and clicks some large transparent screen in his hand. “Tesseract?”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad, Jolly,” Tony says as he gestures for Steve to put the bag on the table. 

“Some kind of gem that might have been a chip from the tesseract,” Tony explains.

“Not sure about that,” Steve says with a shrug. “The tesseract was a pretty intact cube last I saw it.”

“And when was that exactly, soldier boy? Seventy plus years ago? Things age in that time,” Tony comments but then frowns when he looks at Steve. “Excluding some of present company. Hey, Bruce, are you or the big guy gonna age?”

“I’m not sure that’s relevant at this point,” Bruce or Banner or whatever the hell his name is says. 

“Everything, my big green friend, is relevant. Everything.” Tony walks to the computer bank and calls to his assistant JARVIS to bring something up. Peter doesn’t catch exactly what he says because the next thing he sees amazes him and alarms him all at once. Displayed in a semi-circle around the man are several virtual screens with a flow of information which is completely unintelligible to him.

He gasps a little bit and Steve leans over to Peter and says, “I still feel that way.”

“Bring said artifacts over here, please,” Tony says.

“Oh manners, a rarity from the great Tony Stark,” Steve says and puts the bag next to him. 

“You admit I’m great, how sweet, maybe we should date.”

Steve rolls his eyes and crosses his arms as if he’s dealing with a toddler. Peter cannot figure out the dynamics at all. The Captain or Steve fellow seems to act as if he’s the oldest one here but at the same time demonstrates complete naiveté and general innocence. A very confusing mix.

Banner adjusts his glasses and leans over to examine the three items now placed on the counter. “That is definitely not natural.”

“The great and powerful one has spoken,” Tony mumbles as he studies the readout on his screens. “Yeah, yeah, just what the hell.”

“What is it?” Peter asks.

“Oh just your run of the mill tesseract enhanced gem of power or some shit like that,” Tony says as he scratches his weird ass goatee. “We really need our good old god of thunder.” He spins in his chair to look at Banner. “Where is he, by the way?”

Banner lifts a shoulder. “No idea, maybe Jane, maybe Asgard?”

“That’s it, end of the world stuff here, and he’s gone missing?”

“Not exactly end of the world, Tony,” Steve says and picks up the little beetle. “Perhaps we should put it in the beetle and see what it does?”

Mozzie plucks it out of the kid’s hand and says, “Not gonna happen. This is ours. All we needed to know is if it is a power source. If it is, then we’ll be going.”

Tony folds his arms across his chest, tugging at the dark t-shirt he has on. There’s a curious glow underneath it, and Peter ignores it. He thinks he sees a bit of a semi-circle along the bottom of it, like the grin of the Cheshire cat. It is best to ignore these things; sometimes knowledge is more than dangerous; it is outright lunacy. 

“Of course, leave, do what you will, blow yourselves up. I don’t really give a crap.”

“Tony,” Steve says through clenched teeth.

Banner admonishes with low words. “Not very nice.”

“Killjoy, I thought you were my comrade in arms, my amigo, my robin to my batman.”

“I will never be anyone’s robin,” Banner growls and Peter swears there’s a flare of green tinted on his cheeks like a blush only the wrong color. Peter chooses to ignore this as well. 

“Okay, okay, panties, wad, let it be again,” Tony says and hops off the stool he’s sitting on. “Listen, let me take a look at it and get back to you.”

“We’re on kind of a timetable here,” Mozzie says, though Peter has no idea what he is talking about. This is not new so it doesn’t worry him at all.

“Okay, so let me just see everything together,” Tony says. The three of them stare at Peter and Mozzie and for one single moment in time, Peter feels like he’s squaring off against the three Musketeers. 

“Okay, but here,” Peter says and pulls out the two sheets of paper that used to be origami flowers but now have strange writing on them. “This was with the gem.”

Tony lets Peter drop everything on the bench and then picks up the papers to look at them and the gem. It is Mozzie that notices something strange about the papers.

“Hey, give that to me,” Mozzie says and tries to snatch it from Stark’s fist. He does not succeed.

“Tony, give it to him,” the Captain says. His voice mimics that of a teacher exhausted with a too bright pupil. 

“You two really need to let loose, learn something about the world.”

Steve tears the paper from Tony’s grasp and gives it to Mozzie. “Sorry about that.”

Mozzie sniffles once and takes the papers. He holds them up to the glowing gem. “I knew it, I knew it!”

“What?” Peter leans over Mozzie’s shoulder and sees the writing that’s made up of symbols and scribbles shift and change. 

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’

‘You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter…’

‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show…’

“These are all first lines from novels,” Peter whispers and knows they’ve hit a dead end as far as the clues are concerned.

“Classics,” Steve says and when they all look up and stare at him he only shrugs. “I was a sick kid with a lot of time on my hands. I read a lot.”

“Classics,” Mozzie says. “Kate loves the classics.”

“Kate loves the classics,” Peter says and closes his eyes as he realizes what they need to do. “God damn it to hell.” They let her go. They have no idea where in the world she is, now. “Son of a-.”

“What, Suit?” Mozzie says.

Peter opens his eyes and his focus is drawn to the glowing gem, the beetle, and the ankh. He knows what he has to do. He knows they have one course of action. Without a word of explanation, he gathers up the items, thanks the three Musketeers and ushers Mozzie to the elevator.

He has no idea what he’s doing but calls for the mysterious assistant JARVIS to bring them back to the lobby. They have no resistance. 

Stark only calls after them, “Don’t blow up the fucking world, okay? I have a bet with Clint about Capsicle and You tube.”

As the elevator doors slide shut he hears Steve says, “What’s you tube?”

By the time they are outside the building Mozzie is practically on fire, jumping around Peter and begging him to explain. When they get to the car, Peter opens it and they get in. The day is cold and getting colder, but Peter knows they have only one chance at this, one way to right the wrong and Neal sent them the message. He tries not to think of the convoluted logic of it all. 

“Are you ready, Mozzie?”

“Um, ready for what Suit?”

“We’re using this, now.”

“Oh.” Mozzie says and then in a long drawn out sound adds, “Oh.”

Peter places the beetle on the ankh. It clicks into place and then drops the gem out of the box into the head of the beetle. 

Nothing happens until it does.

The world goes black and light.

The world ends and Peter curses, “Jesus Christ, I think I blew up the fucking world.”

TBC

*The references to the fact that Faith is very bendy are from a story by rabidchild67 called Five by Five.

The first lines are from A Tale of Two Cities, Huckleberry Finn, and David Copperfield, respectively.


	8. The Final Score

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter doesn't blow up the world, but then again maybe he should have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story gets serious at this point and some graphic descriptions of violence will be in this chapter.

Peter concedes that blowing up the world is kind of a big deal, that he should at least be wearing something nefarious, like a dark satin cloak or something, not his off the rack suit with a mustard stained tie. He blinks a few times and the deathly blackness that seemed to encompass the entire freaking world starts to grey out and light rises over the hood of the car. 

He expects that whatever happened is about to come back and bite him in the ass. He is not wrong.

He isn't right either.

It takes him about three minutes to get a grip on reality, another two minutes to jostle Mozzie enough to get him mumbling and bumbling awake, and another four minutes to actually get his eyes to focus outside of the vicinity of the Ford Taurus. He decides instantly that this cannot be heaven because 1 - Good Lord, he would not be marooned in heaven with a little imp creature, Mozzie; and 2- while he loves his Taurus somehow he thinks if there are automobiles in heaven they might be a class up from a Ford Taurus. So he's not in heaven and not dead.

Or else he's dead and he's in the other place. 

His thoughts skitter and jump about as he realizes he isn't anywhere near either after life, he's sitting parked in a car near the overpass where Adler and his gang of miscreants threw a tortured Neal to his death. Glancing up at the brightening sky, Peter realizes that it is near dawn, not anywhere near the afternoon. They were just at Stark Tower, it had been afternoon. The big guy, Captain whatever his name was, had been eating cereal in the middle of the afternoon, he remembers this distinctly.

"Um, Suit?"

Peter turns his attention back to Mozzie and then sees he's pointing to the windshield, to the overpass. There's a long dark car, probably a Beamer by its markings, pulling up to the curb on the overpass. There isn't a soul around, except for them and the other car. 

What the hell is going on? 

The scene is familiar but not quite. It is like he's sees the actions of a dream or, better yet, a nightmare played out in reality, in waking time. A man gets out of the back of the car and another one follows. In a few seconds, a woman, - shit – Kate, climbs out of the back of the car and she looks wrecked even from a distance. Her eyes are puffy and he bets they are blood shot. She keeps wiping her nose but keeps her arms huddled close around her most of the time.

As Peter watches the first man - Keller - that is definitely Keller and how the hell did he get out of the hands of Scotland Yard? - goes around to the back of the car and knocks on the trunk. The driver must release the latch because it pops open and Keller stares inside. There's a bit of a debate and Kate is definitely not winning. She reaches out to the other man, whom Peter has identified as Adler and hangs onto the lapels of his overcoat. Peter sees she's crying, hard, begging actually and then he knows why.

"Shit."

"What?"

Keller answers for him by dragging a very alive but very beaten Neal from trunk. 

They've traveled back in time to the moment of Neal's death. He's not sure why or how, he only thought of this point in time when he used the ankh and he thought it would do something, anything to save Neal. He didn't realize it would yank them from one time period to watch this horrific event. Mozzie grabs for the handle of the car and instantly, Peter knows that is the wrong action. 

He lurches over and grabs Mozzie. "No, don't."

"They're going to kill Neal all over again. I'm not watching it. I can't watch it."

"We won't get five feet before Keller or Adler shoots us." He can see the gun tucked into the back of Kellers' belt. Peter doesn't have his own gun with him, he only has Mozzie and a beat up old ankh with a pink crystal beetle and a jazzed up gem stuck in it. No match, no match at all.

"We have to do something."

"We will," Peter says as he eyes Kate. "Neal told us what to do. It has to do with the notes, the first lines of all the classics. Remember, Kate loves the classics." 

Peter hushes Mozzie as he watches Neal sway on his feet. He's hands are ziptied together and he can hardly stand but he's still struggling, still working to get them to release him. There's blood all over his shirt as if there are a thousand dagger puncture wounds along his torso that bled through to stain his clothes; he holds his left arm strangely as if the elbow is dislocated and hurts. His face is a mass of bruises and every so many words he has to turn and spit out the blood. He's still fighting, he's still the Neal Peter knows. 

There's more talking and Adler whips out his gun to shove it at Neal. Peter can read his lips and he's screaming about the treasure, the music box. 'Where the hell is the fucking scarab?'

Neal only laughs and then turns slightly to where their car is parked. They are off the road, partially hidden by construction vehicles. Neal nods once and then turns back to Adler and curses him. Keller's slams a fist into Neal's face and he topples. The pain evident as his head smashes against the bummer of the car. He writhes on the pavement for a minute and Mozzie whimpers in response. As they watch, Neal goes into a seizure when Keller batters his booted foot into his chest again and again like he’s killing a bug on the ground. Once Neal quiets, Keller bends down and ties off Neal's ankles. It won't be long now; Neal will be dead in seconds. 

Keller doesn't even have the decency to pick up Neal. Instead, he grabs a hold of his dislocated elbow so that Neal screams in pain. There's blood drooling down his chin, across the pavement. Keller heaves and Neal's head hits the curb, and then stutters over the rim of the road and to the rail of the overpass. Keller kneels down to say something to Neal, and then pats his face once. It twists something dark and deep in the pit of Peter's stomach. Without ceremony, Keller lifts Neal and tosses him over the rail. There is a deafening thud as Neal's skull hits the concrete below. 

Mozzie gulps back a cry and Peter wants to close his eyes, he wants to forget he ever witnessed this death, but he can't. There's still one more thing he has to watch, one more thing he knows will happen from the crime scene photos. 

Keller and Adler go to climb back into the car, but Kate is standing there, lost and alone, looking at the bridge and the space where her once boyfriend stood. It is cold and empty and lost. She has her arms around her, and her whole body sobs. Keller tells her to get in the damned car, she shakes her head. Adler rounds the side of the car and stands close to her. He puts a gentle hand on her shoulder, telling her to come on now. She shakes her head again. Keller curses and demands that they get in the fucking car. Adler waits a moment for Kate, but she doesn't follow him. He abandons her there on the street. Both Keller and Adler get back into the vehicle and it pulls away only seconds later, leaving her there. 

She staggers to the side of the road and vomits.

The vomit was the reason they knew Kate was there, had participated or at least witnessed the murder of her former boyfriend. This is the moment Peter had been waiting for; he opens the car door and races to her side. 

"Kate? Kate?"

Kate looks up, terror etched in her features. She's a rabbit in the eyes of a fox. She's about to run, but Mozzie is behind Peter and calls to her. "Stop, Kate, we can help. We can change this, please stop."

"What?" Her chest heaves in great sobs yet and her face is a mess of mascara and blotches of tears. "I didn't want this to happen. You have to believe me. I didn't want it to happen."

Peter opens his hands and says, "I'm not here to arrest you, Kate, but you can help us. You have to help us, can you do that? Can you come with us? I'm not going to arrest you, I promise."

She considers him. The shock and horror of the last minutes are still overwhelming her senses Peter can tell. She's still in that place of heightened awareness and absolute disbelieve of what's happening around her. She's out of body and mind; he's seen it enough times to recognize it. 

"Just come on, let's get out of the cold, Okay?" He approaches her and she doesn't move; she doesn't launch herself away from him. "Come on, how about some tea? My wife always said everything is better with tea."

He leads her to the car and knows, for once, he's on the right path. The insanity of the last few days will come to a close soon. 

They find a coffee shop near a small park not far from the scene of the crime. It hurts deep inside, like an empty place has opened up and scraped away the hollows of his chest when he thinks of Neal dead and growing cold in the gutter. Neal will be found soon, and taken to the morgue. He grimaces as they settle into a booth, thinking of where he was as Neal was being killed, the first time.

Shit, how is this his life where he has to live through Neal dying twice?

Mozzie retrieves their order when it’s ready and sets the tea and coffees on the table. No one has much of an appetite and Kate only stares blankly at her tea. Peter peers down at her and opens his mouth to address her when she says, “Are you going to report it? Are you just going to leave him there?”

“He’ll be found soon,” Peter says and knows it sounds cold and awful to his ears. “I have to ask you to help us, Kate.”

“I’ll testify, I’ll tell you everything. This isn’t what I meant to happen,” she says and her eyes are like large saucers – the blue is brilliant and shining from tears. “I never wanted to hurt Neal. That wasn’t the point.”

“I’m not going to ask you what your motive was; I really don’t want to know.” 

Mozzie goes to protest, but Peter lays a hand on his arm to stop him. 

“Vincent was, is-.” She looks away and murmurs, “He’s always so convincing.”

Mozzie cannot contain himself. “Convincing enough to kill someone you pretended to love? You Jezebel.” 

“Mozzie!” Peter grasps his wrist and stops him. “Let’s stay focused.”

“I don’t have to stay,” Kate says and starts to rise.

“I’d really advise you not to leave,” Peter says. “It doesn’t take much to call it in, you know.”

Kate deflates into the booth. She doesn’t look at them but plays with the string on her tea bag. “What do you want?”

“We want you to help us. I need you to go back to the prison, to the day you talked to Neal,” Peter says.

She laughs a little bit and shakes her head. “You’re nuts. How the hell could I do that?”

“That isn’t your concern,” Peter says. He knows this is what Neal intended. 

Somehow, someway, Neal felt threatened. He’d called Peter and told him that all Kate wanted him for was the damned music box. Neal knew what was at the end of the path; somehow Neal had figured it out. He knew what the ankh along with the gemmed beetle did. The lines written in the origami flowers all led back to one thing, the classics. Kate loves the classics, she’s the key. Peter has no idea how else to change this, he could go back in time and stop Neal from committing his first crime, but he has no idea when that was exactly. In order to change Neal’s life, in order to change Neal’s death he has to focus on something he knows, something he absolutely can pinpoint when he uses the ankh next. He knows when Kate visited Neal, he knows this is a critical juncture in time. 

“I need you to go back in time with us and make sure Neal doesn’t try to escape prison,” Peter says.

She laughs. “I can’t do that, if Neal doesn’t escape, then they’ll kill Ellen, they’ll kill me.”

“Who’s Ellen?” Peter says and looks to Mozzie.

“Part of the story you’ll never know if you don’t fix this. You have to know that story, not this one,” Mozzie says. He’s talking in riddles again but now the riddles almost make sense to Peter and this worries him and scares him and makes him want the other story so much more than the one he’s living. 

He knows this classifies him as crazy.

“So, you’re telling me Neal has to escape prison?”

“Yes.”

“We could set up a sting, make sure they can’t touch you or Ellen.”

“That’s not the way the story goes,” Mozzie says. “Neal has to escape prison, he has to. It is the only way things go right for him. If he stays in prison-.” Mozzie stops and closes his eyes.

“What?”

“Let’s just say Vincent Adler has a long reach.”

“Okay, okay,” Peter says. “You make sure he escapes prison on the same schedule. But don’t threaten Ellen and make sure he goes to find you. Make it about you and not this Ellen person. Do not make it about a threat. Make it about,” Peter pauses because it is hard to swallow when she has been such a duplicitous person. “Make it about love.”

Her eyes drop and there are tears gliding down her face.

“Can you do that?” Peter says. “Can you make it about love for him?”

“Yeah, sure, I can do that for Neal.”

His phone rings and he startles because shouldn’t the other Peter, the Peter of this time period – shouldn’t his phone be ringing as well? He shrugs and yanks it out of his jacket pocket. He looks at the screen. 

NYPD

He opens the line and says, “Special Agent Peter Burke.”

“Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD, Agent Burke could you come down and identify a body for me?” 

Damn, he’d forgotten. He missed Beckett’s call the first time. His phone’s battery had died and he only received the message a day later. 

“Agent Burke?” 

He still has no idea why Beckett called him in the first place to identify Neal’s body. He finds himself saying sure, getting the information on where to meet her, and then tucking the phone back in his pocket.

“Well, Suit?”

“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. We’re getting out of here anyway.”

He doesn’t even taste his coffee before he tells his companions to finish up; they have a job to do. He feels like he’s running the biggest sting, the biggest con in the world.

As they leave the café, Mozzie whispers, “This is the last one, the final score.”

“Then let’s make it a good one.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a tiny little guest star this time.


	9. Ambered Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter calls on an old friend to help them figure out paradoxes.

Huddled outside his own house in the early hours of the morning is not what Peter likes to call fun. Of course, not only is he hidden next to the garbage cans of his neighbor in the alleyway, but the clouds just burst open and rain pelts them. The reason he’s currently getting soaked to the bone rests squarely on the shoulders of the imp, Mozzie. 

About a half hour after they left the café and about two minutes before they were about to invoke the ankh’s power again, Mozzie brought up a puzzling if not problematic fact.

“What about the real Kate?” he’d asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m real,” Kate said from the back seat of the sedan.

Mozzie rolled his eyes and sighed as if both Peter and Kate taxed his magnificent brain which irked Peter to no end. Just because he was delusional and crazy insane and happened to convince Peter to race about the world after him on a chase of the wild goose variety did not qualify him as genius material, nor did it allow him to give Peter expressions of absolute disgust and exasperation with his slowness.

“Okay, yes, you are real. But I’m talking about the other Kate, the Kate in the timeline that will go to the prison to see Neal,” Mozzie said. “Have you thought about that, Suit?”

“What?” Peter said and then it dawned on him like the whole sun just burned through his retinas and set his neurons on fire. It hurt his eyeballs as if he’d actually just stared too long at an eclipse. “We probably can’t just make our Kate walk in there after that Kate and take it all back, change her story.”

“We’ll need to incapacitate her,” Kate suggested.

“No, that won’t work,” Peter said. “As soon as we free her, she’ll go to Neal and threaten all over again. We have to get her out of the picture.”

“Are you talking about killing her, Suit?” Mozzie said and his eyes were huge and devious at the same time. Peter wasn’t actually sure how he pulled that expression off at all. “Because I can get behind that.”

“What? Wait, no, you are not killing me!” Kate hung on the back of the front seats and swatted at Mozzie a few times.

“Children!” Peter yelled and said, “No, we’re not killing anyone. What we have-.”

“Is a paradox,” Mozzie supplied.

“Exactly,” Peter said. “And I know the person to help us with this. All we need to do is contact him. We just need to get to my computer at my house.”

“Oh,” Mozzie said and then again he scrunched up his face and added, “That isn’t going to be a walk in the park.”

“What is with you?” Peter sighed and started the car.

So, now he stands outside his own house waiting for the other Peter and the other Elizabeth to leave. In just a few hours, the Peter living in this timeline will find out that Neal is dead, murdered and lying in a ditch. In just a few hours, his life will begin the journey he’s on right now. His mind meanders down the path of what ifs and could bes and it just hurts too much and gives him a headache on top of the migraine he’s already sporting so he decides it’s best just to accept it and move on.

“Here they come,” Mozzie says and points to the door opening. 

The other Peter exits the house first with an umbrella leading the way. He pops it open and turns to usher Elizabeth out as well. They stop on the top of the stairs and kiss under the umbrella. Mozzie moons over it and Peter scowls at him. 

“What a beaut,” Mozzie says and gives a little fluttering noise. It is quite upsetting and a bit disturbing to Peter. “She’s good in any timeline, I bet.”

“That’s my wife you’re talking about, you know.”

Mozzie raises an eyebrow over those thick dark glasses and says, “That’s his wife, not yours.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, that is my wife, I did that not weeks ago,” Peter says because he has a distinct memory of doing it. Remembering the feel of Elizabeth’s warm lips on his mouth in the drizzling cold of the day brings a flush to his chest that aches. 

As he watches, Elizabeth giggles a bit and whispers in the other Peter’s ear. He knows she’s promising his favorite dinner tonight. He knows in a second she’s going to say she forgot something and run back in the house as he stands in the rain outside waiting for her. He remembers. 

Except she doesn’t. 

She turns and closes the door. They walk down the stairs together and find their Taurus. He opens the car door for her and she slides inside. The other Peter rounds the car and opens the door. He can recall getting in the car, doing these exact things, but it was after she went back inside for her day planner. Elizabeth still uses a hard print day planner because it is just plain easier for her with all of the events and scheduling than using her smartphone. Why didn’t she go back inside?

His heart races, does he have it wrong? No, he recalls every moment of the day Neal died, it is seared into his brain. He even remembers their car drive as he drops her off at Burke Premier Event’s offices. She’d leaned down and looked in the window of the car and told him she loved him and then added, “For all times.”

He thought it was a strange thing for her to say; now he’s not so sure. He puzzles over it but Mozzie tugs on his sleeve like a persistent puppy nipping at him to go on a walk. 

“They’re gone.”

“Okay, let’s move.” Peter leads the way with Mozzie and Kate trailing behind him. They go up the steps, and he pulls out his keys and opens the door. Satchmo greets them, but isn’t really that interested since according to the dog, Peter just left two minutes ago.

Peter goes to the dining room table and tugs off his coat. “There’s something wrong, you know.”

“What?” Kate says as she walks around the living room. She’s casing the place and it gives him the willies. 

He addresses Mozzie instead of Kate. “Elizabeth was supposed to come back inside and get that.” He points to the day planner sitting on the coffee table. “She was supposed to come and get it. I remember because it made me late for my meeting because we got stuck on the bridge.”

“Weird.”

“Weird, that’s all you have to say Mister Mysterious Time Guy?” Peter says and boots up the computer. 

“Well, nothing in life is predictable. Not even timelines. Things go astray all the time, remember the butterfly, my son,” Mozzie says and steeples his fingers.

“Oh for the love of-.” Peter starts but decides not to even consider wasting his breath. Instead, he keys in his computer password while Mozzie tells him it is a lousy one, then opens up his skype application. It takes a few tries and some emails to get the right person on the line.

“Peter, oh Peter, not my Peter, of course, of course!”

Peter smiles at the face on the screen and waves to the older man. The man has curly hair, thick wrinkles, and deeply intelligent eyes yet at the same time, there’s an innocent near childlike quality to his demeanor. “Walter, so nice to see you again. How’s Harvard? How’s your son?”

“Always nice. Peter is good, now that he’s accepting this timeline. I heard about the u-boat, very fascinating.”

Peter decides to ignore the timeline statement. He doesn’t need to get into another discussion of timelines and which should be which or what should be what. For Christ’s sakes, he is not the Rabbit in Wonderland. “Yes, Nazi treasure in New York City harbor,” Peter says and tries to ask a question before Walter jumps back in and interrupts him.

“Really, someday you should come to Boston, before my laboratory gets ambered and the poor cow. The poor thing, you know, we never extricated her from the amber. How fair is that when she supplied all those wonderful milkshakes for all those years?”

Peter’s not sure how to answer that but doesn’t have to because Mozzie pushes him out of the way and says, “We’ll get to Boston long before the amber, don’t worry.”

“Who is that man? Peter? Peter?” Walter starts pressing keys on the computer and then Astrid shows up and stops him. “Peter, I don’t like strange bald men, you should know that by now.”

“Who does?” Peter says and flaps Mozzie away when he tries to protest. “Just shush. Just be quiet, he’s our only hope here.”

“Oh, oh, did you hear that Allison, I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Walter says to Astrid off screen. She mutters something that sounds suspiciously like you are not a Jedi Master, Walter. 

She appears on the screen, frowns, and says, “Don’t encourage him. He’ll be dropping acid again if he thinks he can control the Force.”

Walter pushes her away and grins with his tenuous smile. “You were saying?”

“Yes, Walter, I need your advice on time paradoxes.” Peter explains the situation and, for all his freakishly weird ass ways, Walter follows along with rapt attention. “So we want to know how to deal with this timeline’s Kate and our Kate. How can we make sure that our Kate is the only Kate Neal listens to? How do we silence the other Kate?”

“You’re dealing with Temporal Duplicity. A rare but not difficult situation,” Walter says. “Your Kate, the one standing in the back there, stealing your silverware, just needs to go to the prison at the same time as the other Kate. Once they cross paths, only one Kate will exist.”

“One Kate?” Peter says at the same time Mozzie shouts, “What?”

Peter shoves Mozzie away and addresses Walter, “Listen, does that mean we don’t want our Kate to meet the other Kate. We shouldn’t have them cross paths then, right? Otherwise, we end up without our Kate.”

Walter shakes his head and points his finger at the screen. “Not necessarily. When you have a Temporal Duplicity, it is like an echo or better yet an unfocused image. When you look through a camera and an image isn’t focused you might see two or three of the same image. Once you focus them, they become one solid image to capture. It is the same thing, but not.”

“Explain the ‘but not’ part,” Peter says.

“The multiple images merge into one. The only difference is that the strongest image, the overriding image becomes the real one.” 

“What does that mean exactly,” Peter says and rubs his temple. Really, after this is done, he is going to have a very stiff drink. Drinks, plural, many, lots of them.

“Whichever one is the strongest will overtake the other. That one will become the Kate in the timeline you are manipulating,” Walter says.

“How do we make sure that ours is the strongest one?”

Walter claps his hands together and says, “Well, that’s the fun part, my boy. You can’t. It’s a crap shoot, always will be, always was! Ha! Now, when will you come to Boston and have cheeseburgers and smoothies with me?”

“Soon, soon,” Peter says and bids him farewell as they shut down the connection. 

“That does not sound good,” Mozzie says as he gives the stink eye to Kate. 

“What?” She hides her hands behind her back. For a pickpocket taught by Neal, she’s fairly clumsy. “I can do it. I can.”

“How can we even believe you? You’re the one who lead Neal to his death, you bitch.”

Kate lashes out, launching herself across the room at Mozzie but just as Peter grapples to tear them apart the front door opens and Elizabeth walks in. They freeze. She stands there, staring at them, studying them, and then looking at the day planner on the coffee table in the living room.

Mozzie yanks himself out of Kate’s claws and straightens his coat. Kate deflates a degree but still hisses at Mozzie under her breath. Peter opens his hands as if to explain to his wife, though he has no idea what exactly he should say or even make up at this point. 

Elizabeth places her index finger on her lips as if to silence his explanations. She crosses the room to his side, her heels clicking all the way. She leans up and kisses his cheek. After, a moment of gazing at him, she looks at each of his companions, and then she raises her hand and wipes off the lipstick mark on his cheek.

Her hand lingers on his cheek, cupping it. “For all times, Peter. For all times.”

She turns on her heel and leaves. He stands stunned but Mozzie races to the window and slips the drapes aside and gasps in a breath. “Holy Mother of – he’s right out there.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“Shit,” Peter says and joins him at the window. Elizabeth climbs in the car and peers back at the house. She offers only a slight wave and then turns back to the other Peter. “Shit, we have to get this done, before I go stark raving mad. This is starting to make me a little more than just a bit dizzy.”

“How do you think the rest of us feel?” Mozzie says and then turns to Kate. “Are you going to do this? Are you going to do this for Neal or are you just going to save yourself?”

She meets his eyes and they fall silent for a long minute. Her large blue eyes are unblinking and cold in many ways. Peter never saw the love Neal did, never understood how he actually caught Neal with just Kate as the lure. 

In a whisper, she says, “You didn’t have to watch.” She heaves in a breath and her chest trembles. “They made me watch while they hurt him, they made me sit there and watch.”

Peter swallows down his doubt of her. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

She wipes at her eyes and nods. Mozzie offers his hand to her and she takes it. They leave the house. In the car they use the ankh and the next thing Peter knows the world breaks down and life falls away. He’s in the blackness again and blinding light at the same time.

Once the fog clears and they are in their right mind, Peter recognizes the visitor’s parking lot at Sing Sing prison. Kate, the other Kate, is walking up the path to the prison. 

“Go,” Peter says and Kate is out the door. She’s racing to meet the other Kate. They collide in a tangle of limbs, and hands, and hair. In a blink, a single blink, there is only one. One Kate. She stands up from where she’s fallen on the sidewalk, dusts herself off, and then heads up to the door of the prison. She never looks back, she never acknowledges them.

“Suit?”

“Come on, we have to go,” Peter says. He pulls out the ankh again. 

“Shouldn’t we wait?”

“There’s really only one way to make sure it worked.” Peter latches the beetle in place. “And that’s to go forward to the day of Neal’s escape.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter to get Neal resurrected!


	10. The Possibilities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here we come to the end of our journey.

He drops Mozzie off outside a small diner in midtown. He stands there with his hands down at his sides, not sure what to do, not sure what to say. For the better part of the last few days this little imp creature floated him around the world and through time. They still haven’t jumped forward to their time, they won’t be doing that.

It is the day that Neal will escape prison. They have to trust in Kate. In order for the plan to work, Peter has to find Neal and put him back where he belongs. Mozzie has to be the stalwart friend and confidant according to his own reports on that timeline. 

He has no idea what will happen to Keller, or Adler, or Kate. Anytime Peter mentions Kate, Mozzie gets a crinkled look to his face and doesn’t meet his eyes. He ignores it, they set out to do one thing and that was to make sure Neal, and all his wonderful potential, didn’t end up dead in a ditch with a cracked skull and blank eyes. The crime scene photos still haunt Peter.

Both Mozzie and Peter have to find themselves – their other selves- this day and start reliving history from this day forward – writing a new future and a new timeline. Without a shadow of a doubt, Peter is sure he will be able to overtake the other Peter of this day, this timeline. He’ll be able to overwrite what happened over a year ago, and then start forward on what Mozzie says is a blank slate with only afterimages of what happened before. When Peter asked what effects those afterimages might have on the path to the future, Mozzie had just replied, “Best you don’t know, Suit.”

So they stand waiting to say goodbye. Peter has to get to the bank vault and be there on time for the Dutchman to blow up their evidence in his face. He doesn’t have much time, not much time at all. He thinks it a little funny that for someone with the power to jump through time, he has so little of it at his disposal right now. 

“You think she did it, Suit?” Mozzie asks. They never caught up with Kate again after she went into the prison. It wasn’t Peter’s aim to do that, because if she didn’t do it then, she never would. They had to trust her. 

“I think, I hope.” Something deep in his gut wishes that some part of Kate actually loved Neal. He looks to the street. It is a beautiful day. Crisp and sunny and nearing the holiday season. 

“Then we did all we could do, right?” Mozzie looks up at him with something akin to a child’s worry. For all the man is probably Peter’s age, he still looks more innocent than he should. 

“I hope.” Shrugging it off his shoulder, Peter hands Mozzie the canvas bag with the ankh, the scarab, and the little piece of energized gem. “Get rid of it, Mozzie. Make sure it’s destroyed. Don’t keep it.”

“Wouldn’t think of it, Suit.”

Peter isn’t entirely sure that Mozzie is telling the truth, but he has to accept it. He has to trust this little man, who came to his office with red eyes and a torn look about him because his friend had been murdered so horribly. He has to trust him. He thinks it will not be the last time he trusts this man.

“Okay, then,” Peter says and feels a little lost, a little like he’s flailing around on a rope over the endless sky. He sticks out his hand.

Mozzie considers him, then nods, and takes it. “Keep well, Suit. Don’t let them tell you they’re right all the time, okay?”

“I’ll try.” Peter gives him a firm shake.

“There is no try-.”

“Do or do not,” Peter says. “I know that one, and thank God we can’t have a visit from him.”

“Can’t we?” Mozzie raises his eyebrows and Peter laughs. 

“That’s enough from you,” Peter says and bows his head, then peers up at the man. “Take care of yourself.”

“You, too, and your wife, okay?”

“Okay.” Peter places his hands on his hips, shoving his overcoat back. “Don’t you have some place you have to be?”

“Of course, I have to get to Friday.”

That makes tons of sense, because you know it is only Tuesday. Peter doesn’t ask, because he thinks at some point in time, that sentence will actually make sense to him and this frightens him. Just a little bit, but it also gives him solace.

“See you ‘round?” Peter says as he steps to his parked car.

Mozzie lifts his free hand in a gesture of farewell and says, “You can count on it, Suit.”

*oOo*  
When the collision happens it feels like his world slows to snap shots from a camera. He can see the other Peter, his past in front of him like a mirrored reflection. He’s walking from his car to the bank where he will wait for the evidence to be blow up in his face. The other Peter turns just seconds before he approaches and stops – his stunned look mixed with fear and puzzlement at meeting himself on the street.

Peter doesn’t pause, doesn’t stop, and doesn’t try to explain. He only rushes him and they fall to the pavement. Thoughts and visions and lives crash into one another. He feels the echoes of his past amplified as if the sound on a television is too high. He braces himself against it and tones it down. He fights for control, for this life, for his life all over again.

He feels like he’s done this a thousand times.

He wonders briefly, if he has.

He understands why Mozzie knows so much about the timeline.

He takes over. He wins this little battle in the larger war for Neal’s life.

*oOo*  
The sad thing is, is that he has to let the Dutchman blow everything up. He has to move through those minutes that he’d already lived. He frowns a bit when he looks at Jones, what the hell kind of facial hair is that? 

He lets things play out, with a fucking wish and a prayer that things change. He can’t change them, not yet. Someone else has to change them. There has to be a change. He trusted Kate. He does his little screaming outrage at the idiots around him. He does the dance, but Christ he wants something to CHANGE.

It does.

Diana appears. 

She never appeared the first time around, at least he doesn’t remember it that way. 

“What?” he says to her.

“Neal Caffrey escaped.”

The dominoes start to fall and he smiles and now his life is new and Neal is alive.

*oOo*  
“I missed her by two days…..”

The words ring in Peter’s ears and he lets them settle in the pit of his stomach. He trusted Kate, and now he has to somehow save Neal. He doesn’t know how to make sure the dominoes can make the leap. Neal will get another four years for his little stunt and Mozzie said that Adler had a long reach. Adler could still kill Neal while he’s in prison, could still threaten Ellen.

Adler and Keller are still in play somehow. Kate is on the run. He hasn’t put all the pieces together but he’ll try. He’ll figure out it.

Neal does the most amazing thing. He stands up, looks at Peter’s suit, and picks out the fiber. He says to Peter, “Do you know what this is?”

Of course, Peter doesn’t. The first time it took weeks to figure it out and, by that time, the Dutchman slipped through his fingers, never to be caught. As they speak, Peter can see the brilliance, the mind he needs to save glittering in those eyes, those blue eyes before him. 

“What’s it worth if I tell you what this is?” Neal says, with a bit of a cocky look to his grin. He asks for a meeting, just a meeting.

“Okay,” Peter says, his heart’s beat robbing him of breath.

“It’s a security fiber for the new Canadian hundred dollar bill.”

Everything changes after that and Peter cannot predict any of it. He remembers a different past or a different future. He isn’t sure which it is. All he knows is that it took a little imp, a lot of strange people, and his wife’s words about love and chasing after her to convince him to take Neal on his deal.

Kate dies. He regrets it, and holds Neal as he mourns.

Fowler disappears.

Keller has a tendency to kidnap people.

Adler is the biggest dick around. 

Yet, it all turns out in the end. When Peter finds Neal in Cape Verde years later and hugs him and holds him and tells him how very good it is to see him, it all spirals down to that moment from another life, that horrible moment when the package was delivered to his office, the package with Neal’s ashes. He holds Neal tight to his chest, because he never wants to lose him, not like that, never again.

He’s leaving the past or the future behind and he’s walking into the unknown, the undiscovered lands which are yet to be written, but he knows he’s done his best to fix what was wrong, and knows the pain and sorrow, and angst over the years has been worth it. In the days and years that follow, he never says a word when there’s a criminal archeologist that looks like a vampire slayer, he keeps mum about the man in the tin suit and the other one in the spangley outfit, and he only chuckles when Walter calls. There will be others, but he just accepts it and moves on.

He never whispers a word to Neal. He never asks his wife how she knew. He never asks Mozzie anything about it.

Except, there are times, when he looks at Mozzie and they share an understanding, a knowledge that no one around them can possibly comprehend. Mozzie only nods and smiles. Peter bows his head and thinks, oh the possibilities……

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this little trip. It is a far departure from what I normally write. 
> 
> And for those of you who would ask, yes I think Peter would have angst over some of the changes to the time line -especially with the death of Kate. I decided against going into that because it changed the feel of the piece. I do think like everyone else, Peter has to make decisions that change people's lives everyday. I think that on a whole he would feel guilty and have some angst over it, but know in the end he made the right choice.  
> Guest Stars in order of appearance  
> Chapter 3 Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill from Stargate SG1  
> Chapter 4 Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds  
> Chapter 5 Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from Sherlock (BBC)  
> Chapter 6 Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series  
> Chapter 7 Pepper Potts, Steve Rogers (Captain America), Tony Stark (Iron Man), and Bruce Banner (Hulk) from the Avengers  
> Chapter 8 Kate Beckett from Castle  
> Chapter 9 Walter from Fringe

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a character death piece, I promise.
> 
> PS Love Kudos, 'cause hey they don't cost anything!


End file.
